$** EXPLAINING 
HE BRITISHERS 




FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE 




Class 

Book XI 

\°i 18 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/explainingbritis01wile 




[Bassano, Ltd. 

Vice-Admiral Sims 
Commanding United States Naval Forces in European Waters 




[daily Mad photograph. 



"Getting Together" 

Union Jack and Stars and Stripes over the Houses of Parliament, 

April, 1917 



EXPLAINING THE 
BRITISHERS 



BY 



FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE 

AUTHOR OF "MEN AROUND THE KAISER " 
AND "THE ASSAULT" 



The Story of the British Empire's Mighty Effort 
in Liberty's Cause 




LONDON 
WILLIAM HEINEMANN 



^'1 



z.i-^ 5 'io 



London : William Heinematm, 1918. 






To 

My Fellow- Yanks 

Who are Streaming into Europe 

For the Worthy Purpose 

of 

Kanning the Kaiser 

This Booklet is Affectionately 

Dedicated 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword . . . vii 

CHAP. 

I. England and America . . 9 

II. "Playing the Game" . .19 

III. The British Navy . . .29 

IV. The British Army . . .43 
V. The Home Army . . .56 

VI. Ireland and the Colonies . . 69 

VII. How the Britishers are Governed 84 

VIII. The Bulldog Breed . . .99 

IX. The Real Britisher . . .116 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Foxing 

Vice- Admiral Sims. Commanding United 

States Naval Forces in European Waters c ^' 

" Getting Together." Union Jack and 
Stars and Stripes over the Houses of 
Parliament, April, 1917 . . . ruu 

General John J. Pershing. Commander- 
in-Chief of the American Expeditionary- 
Forces . . . . . .16 

Ambassador and Mrs. Page at " Eagle 
Hut," London, on the First Anni- 
versary of America's Entry into 
the War . . . . .17 

Major-General John Biddle, United States 
Army. Commanding United States Forces 
in the United Kingdom . . .64 

London's Mighty Welcome to the Yanks.. 

Trafalgar Square, August 15th, 1917 65 

King George and Queen Alexandra 
Reviewing American Troops Marching 
Past Buckingham Palace, May 25th, 
1918 ...... 80 

"The Stuff to Give 'Em." American 

gunners at Chateau Thierry . . 81 

King George's "Glad Hand" to the 

Yanks 120 

vi 



FOREWORD 

Our country has sent millions of her sons to fight in 
the International Army of Civilisation. 

Our object is to win a complete victory as soon as 
possible and return to our homes. 

We therefore wish our help to be of the maximum 
efficiency. 

The better we know the Allies, the more effective 
our co-operation will be. 

All of us know in a general way the splendid fortitude 
and glorious deeds of the soldiers and sailors of Greae 
Britain, France, and Italy. But how much do we 
know of their tremendous losses in lives or of the labours 
and suffering of their civil populations ? 

This book was written by an American who lived in 
England before and throughout the war. His purpose 
is to explain exactly what sort of a chap the Britisher 
is and what the Army, Navy, and people of Great 
Britain and her Colonies have done in Freedom's 
cause. Mr. Wile shows how the Britishers bore the 
brunt of the onslaught of an enemy which had been 
preparing for this war for nearly half a century. 

Any American soldier, sailor, or civilian who takes 



viii FOREWORD 

the trouble to read these pages will find that both the 
men and women of the British nation have to their 
credit a truly wonderful record of courage and accom- 
plishment. Nearly a million of their fighting men 
have been killed in battle, and twice as many wounded, 
but there was never any sign of weakening. 

I am sure that a clear understanding of the extent 
of the Britishers' 1 sacrifices, both on the firing-line 
and at home, will inspire all Americans to put forth 
their best efforts to bring this distressing war to a 
satisfactory end. 




Commanding U.S. Naval Forces 
Operating in European Waters. 



EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 
CHAPTER I 

ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

How many of you fellows, I wonder, landed on 
the shores of England with the same ideas about 
her that I had when I first came ? Two things 
were uppermost in my thoughts — first, that we once 
fought her in order to win our independence, and, 
secondly, that every Englishman hated us as the 
Devil hates holy water. I arrived in England with 
a chip on my shoulder, and I expected to have it 
knocked off. With my primary-school United 
States history deep and patriotically ingrained in 
me, I felt sure that I had come to a country with 
which America was no longer at war but which was 
still our " enemy " all the same. 

Now I venture to think that each and every one 
of you who has already arrived on British soil has 
been here just long enough to realise that our 
boyhood-schoolday notions about England are 
woefully out of date. I do not mean that we 
should forsake George Washington and the Fourth 



10 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

of July, and all the glorious traditions that enshrine 
them in our hearts. They are immortally dear to 
us. I do not mean that we should forget about 
that King of England, George III., against whom 
the American Colonies rebelled, or Lord North, his 
Prime Minister, on whose misguided counsel he 
acted. I do not mean that we should erase from 
our memories the fundamental fact that the 
Americans arranged the Boston Tea Party in 1773 
because they objected to Taxation Without Repre- 
sentation. I do not mean that Bunker Hill and 
Brandywine, Ticonderoga and Valley Forge, York- 
town, Lafayette and Rochambeau, are names that 
American boys should no longer mention. All 
these things are precious to us, for they are the 
concrete upon which our skyscraper Republic is 
firmly imbedded. 

But the Declaration of Independence is a vener- 
able document. John Hancock, Benjamin Frank- 
lin, Thomas Jefferson and our other sainted 
national heroes signed it 142 years ago. Five 
generations of Americans have come and gone since 
1776, and as many generations of English men and 
women have been making history in the seven score 
years and two that have intervened. The England 
of to-day — the England in which you have arrived 
on the final stage of your trip to the battlefield — is 
no more the England of George III. and Lord North 
than our own United States is the America of the 
eighteenth century. Any Englishman who cher- 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA 11 

ished about us in 1918 the Tory notions of 1750- 
1780 would be just as ludicrous a figure as an 
Englishman in satin knickerbockers, powdered wig 
and a cocked hat. He would be a joke. He would 
not dare to show himself in public. He would be 
laughed to scorn. The times have changed. 

I have never looked through an English primary- 
school history book to see what English boys and 
girls are taught about the American War of Inde- 
pendence. I don't suppose they get a great deal 
of it — indeed there is far too little taught in Eng- 
land, even in the great Universities, about the 
United States and United States institutions. The 
war ought to, and probably will, remedy that state 
of affairs. 

At any rate, one of the results of our comradeship- 
in-arms with the Britishers in this war ought to be 
a new American school history of the War of 
Independence. Such a history, as I have already 
suggested, need not and should not omit the vital 
fact that the Colonies rebelled in a just cause and 
won an independence to which they were entitled. 
But it ought also to teach that England's leading 
statesmen were on America's side ; that George III. 
and his official advisers were acting against the 
views of large sections of the British people ; that 
these views could not be enforced because only 
200,000 Britishers out of a population of 8,000,000 
had a vote ; that several British generals resigned 
their commissions rather than fight against the 



12 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

American Colonists ; that George III. had to adopt 
the expedient of hiring 30,000 German mercenaries 
(Hessians) to fight for him in America ; that Pitt, 
Fox and Burke, the three outstanding political 
leaders of the day, all opposed George III.'s 
obstinate policy toward the Americans, and that 
Pitt (later Lord Chatham) withdrew his own sons 
from the Regular Army in order that they might 
not have to fight against the Colonies. These are 
historical facts. As American schoolboys, you and I 
did not get them, except in rare instances. That is 
why, to a large extent, we were brought up and 
grew up on anti-British dope. 

I have mixed with, lived among and worked for 
Englishmen for twelve years. It is my privilege 
to know cooks' sons and Dukes' sons, as they say 
hereabouts, and even a Duke or two, and I have 
enjoyed friendly contact, without feeling the need 
of wearing smoked glasses, with Sirs and Lords of 
high degree. I am acquainted with all sorts and 
conditions of English folk, from commoners to 
nobles. I belong to their clubs, I eat at their 
tables, I am the recipient of their confidences, 
and they receive my own in a spirit of patience and 
generosity. On the evidence of my own observa- 
tions — and my journalistic occupation makes 
them intimate to a degree far beyond the oppor- 
tunities enjoyed by the average American resident 
in the British Isles — I say without hesitation that 
no Englishman whose opinion is worth a tinker's 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA 13 

cuss has anything to-day except boundless contempt 
for the policies which tore the American Colonies 
from the British Crown a century and a half ago. 
He is ashamed of them. He pities the short- 
sightedness of the statesmen who carried them out 
to England's eternal disadvantage. He will tell you, 
as hundreds of Englishmen have told me, that a 
George III. who tried in this age and day to govern 
British Colonies as our Original Thirteen were 
governed would wake up one fine morning — as an 
Irishman might put it — and find himself beheaded. 
That is what Englishmen of at least one era did with 
a King who, in their opinion, was not running his 
job properly. Some day, perhaps, you will come to 
London on leave. In Whitehall, the famous street 
on which the great Government offices stand, you 
will see a grey old building, celebrated as the scene 
of the execution of Charles I. He was the monarch 
who played fast and loose with the liberties of the 
people and lost his head for it. 

The plain fact of the matter is that present-day 
Englishmen — the kind who are giving you the glad 
hand at this very hour, wherever you are — disavow 
the policy that " lost America to England," because 
they love Liberty just as much as we Americans do. 
And — this is something you may not fully compre- 
hend — they have just as much Liberty as we have, in 
every respect. They are in the war because they 
want to retain their Liberty — as we do. England is 
a Republic with a King instead of a President. That 



14 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

is the difference between our respective forms of 
Government in a nutshell. The English have a 
hereditary instead of an elected Ruler. They 
respect and venerate their monarch just as we 
respect and venerate our Presidents. They stand 
at the salute when " God save the King " is sung or 
played because the King is the accepted guardian, 
protector and embodiment of English liberties. His 
crown — which he only wears, by the way, once or 
twice a year for some traditional ceremonial at 
Court or in Parliament — is not a symbol of despotic 
power like the crown that the Kaiser wears. It is 
the emblem of the majesty of British freedom, of 
which the reigning Sovereign is the figurehead. 
That is the long and short of " the King business " 
in England. When the occupant of the throne 
happens to be a regular fellow like King George — a 
real he-man, a good sportsman, democratic to the 
core, a hard worker, and a 100 per cent, gentleman — 
" the King business " is safe and sound. We prefer 
a President because, as the boy who had red hair 
said, we were born that way. But the liberty-loving 
English are perfectly satisfied with their system of a 
President who is called a King. 

Get that, and you will understand why the English 
and ourselves are now fighting shoulder to shoulder 
to destroy Autocracy. We are fellow-Democrats. 
Both of us believe, as Abraham Lincoln believed, 
that the only just Government is Government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people. England 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA 15 

has been fighting for four years, and will go on 
fighting for forty more, if necessary, in order that 
Government of that sort shall not (in Lincoln's words 
at Gettysburg) "perish from the face of the earth." 
I guess we are all agreed that a friend in need is 
a friend indeed. England, in your lifetime and mine, 
proved herself to be precisely that kind of a friend of 
the United States. I refer to the Spanish-American 
War. Nearly all of you boys were babes in arms in 
1898, or at least kids. So it may be new to many of 
you that England played an important part in our 
short and snappy conflict with the Spaniards. You 
all know who Admiral George Dewey was — the man 
whom President McKinley sent to the Philippine 
Islands with instructions to destroy the Spanish 
Fleet. He made a clean job of it bright and early on 
the morning of May 1, and, after sending Admiral 
Montojo's squadron to the bottom, Dewey estab- 
lished a blockade of Manila Bay. Besides the vic- 
torious American fleet, there were two other 
squadrons in Philippine waters — a British squadron, 
commanded by Admiral Chichester, and a German 
squadron, commanded by Admiral von Diederichs. 
The British, with centuries of Naval traditions and 
experience, respected Admiral Dewey's blockade un- 
qualifiedly. The Germans, being people who butt in 
where angels fear to tread, were surly. They 
questioned Dewey's rights and set up some chesty 
pretensions of their own. Courteous protests by 
Dewey having failed to convince the Germans that 



16 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

he meant business when he told them that he was 
boss in the Bay and intended to remain so, the 
American Admiral trained his guns on the German 
Fleet. Then he notified Admiral von Diederichs that 
the guns might go off if the Germans continued to be 
ugly. This made von Diederichs sit up. He sent 
his flag-lieutenant (von Hintze, who was German 
Minister of Foreign Affairs for a few minutes this 
year) to talk matters over with Dewey and the 
British Admiral. Dewey's reply was straight to 
the point. " Tell your Admiral," he said, " that 
if Germany wants war with the United States, she 
can have it in five minutes ! " 

The interview which von Diederichs' flag-lieu- 
tenant had with Admiral Chichester, the British 
commander, was also very pointed. " I have come 
to you," said von Hintze, " to ask what the British 
squadron will do in case there is trouble between 
the Germans and the Americans." 

" Tell Admiral von Diederichs, with my compli- 
ments," replied Chichester, " that that is a matter 
known only to Admiral Dewey and myself." 

It was not long after that, to Admiral von 
Diederichs' astonishment, that the British squadron 
manoeuvred into a position that would have brought 
the German ships, had they dared to fire a shot, in 
conflict not only with the American squadron but 
with the British as well. Diederichs gave Dewey 
no more trouble after that. 

That was the first, but not the last, great proof of 




[Daily Mail snap-shot. 

General John J. Pershing 
Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces 




Ambassador and Mrs. Page at "Eagle Hit," London, on the 
First Anniversary of America's Entry into the ^^'A k 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA 17 

friendship which England showed us during the 
Spanish- American War. The Dewey-Diederichs 
episode angered the Kaiser and his fellow War Lords 
in Germany beyond words. They had just launched 
their famous Naval programme, and nothing 
would have proved more useful for their purposes 
than a victory, bloodless or otherwise, over the 
" arrogant Yankees " in Manila Bay. The Kaiser 
swore to be revenged for the " insult " Dewey had 
put upon the German Admiral. He vowed that 
Spain by hook or by crook must be spared the 
ignominy of defeat by the United States. Germany 
decided to form a league of European Governments, 
which should go to the American Government and 
say that they did not propose to let " the upstart 
of the Western World " crush an ancient and proud 
European nation. The German Ambassador at 
Washington, Baron von Holleben, laid the Kaiser's 
scheme before the British Ambassador, Sir Julian 
Pauncefote. It got no further. England put her 
big foot down, and once again Germany's plot to 
embarrass and humiliate Uncle Sam was kiboshed. 
The German Fleet was nearly as strong as ours in 
1898, if not stronger, but the Kaiser knew that if he 
dared to interfere in the settlement of our quarrel 
with Spain, Germany would probably have to 
reckon with the British Navy, too. So he con- 
cluded not to burn his fingers. 

The Government archives at Washington contain 
plenty of evidence that England and the United 

c 



18 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

States have marched shoulder to shoulder, as friends 
and mutual well-wishers, on numerous other occa- 
sions. But as fighting-men I think the Philippines 
episode, and what followed, will make the strongest 
appeal to you. For my own part, I have always 
thought that if John Bull had never done anything 
else to deserve our help when he was in a tight 
corner, his action at Manila in May, 1898, was 
enough to entitle England to our undying 
gratitude. 

In the opening chapter of this story it has merely 
been my aim to refresh your memories on modern 
Anglo-American history. And now I want to tell 
you, as best I can, how mother Britain, hopelessly 
unprepared, rolled up her sleeves in August, 1914 — 
slowly, as is her way — but gritting her teeth more 
resolutely all the time, until to-day she stands forth 
a giantess in arms, her world-wide territories 
uninvaded, her flag supreme on the high seas, 
her will unbroken, and all her hundreds of millions 
of people, white and black, united in one fierce, 
firm determination — to "carry on." till victory, 
complete and final, is achieved. 



CHAPTER II 



PLAYING THE GAME 



Cricket is England's national game. It is to her 
what baseball is to us. Every English kid grows 
up on cricket, just as you and I were raised on base- 
ball. Though there are professional cricketers, 
cricket has always been an essentially amateur, or 
" gentleman's," game. English boys have their 
great cricket heroes like C. B. Fry, just as we have 
our Ty Cobbs. To be the best bowler at your school, 
college or university in England, or to play for your 
county, is to win one of the finest honours you can 
possibly achieve. The distinction is more than likely 
to cling to you through life. It may be mentioned 
in " Who's Who," and perhaps help you to get 
elected to Parliament — provided, first and always, 
that you have " played the game." 

It is with that feature of cricket — " playing the 
game," which means playing it not only well but 
honourably, fairly and squarely all the time — that I 
want to deal, briefly. It means everything in Eng- 
land. It means so much that when a man doesn't 

19 c 2 



20 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

deal honestly with his fellow-men, or stoops to any- 
thing low or underhanded, people say, " It isn't 
cricket." He has not " played the game." Baseball 
became immensely popular in England this year, 
thanks to the presence of so many American soldiers 
and sailors on British soil. But it will never take the 
place of cricket in Englishmen's affections. It can 
no more do that than the American temperament 
can be grafted on to the English character. Cricket 
is English temperament and character in composite. 
To our way of thinking, of course, the game isn't 
in the same street with baseball. I never met a 
Yankee who could keep awake during a whole 
cricket game, which isn't so surprising, seeing that 
a real cricket match can last three whole days ; 
and Englishmen have fallen asleep at a World's 
Championship match between the Giants and the 
White Sox. Cricket to us is slow, old-fashioned 
and unexciting. Baseball, in Englishmen's eyes, is 
noisy, nerve-wracking and upsetting. In the fact 
that cricket is deliberate and baseball spontaneous, 
we get, in my opinion, very close to the main 
difference in the English and American make-ups. 
I took an English pal to the Army and Navy 
baseball game in London on the Fourth of July, 
when the King and Queen and other Royal person- 
ages were present. I wanted to convert my friend 
from cricket to baseball. I wanted to show him 
what a sure-enough outdoor game was like — where 
victory goes to the team that thinks fastest, acts 



"PLAYING THE GAME" 21 

quickest, and is up on its toes and moving every 
second of the time. It was a red-hot contest and 
as it progressed I rejoiced that my English friend 
was seeing such a splendid exhibition. The pitch- 
ing was superfine, a lot of men were fanned out, the 
base-running and fielding were almost perfect, and 
the Army nearly tied the score in the last inning — 
if they had, I would have been five plunks to the 
good ! At any rate, it was a hair-raising finish. 
Although my English comrade had not yelled him- 
self hoarse, or joined with me in abusing the umpire, 
or " stretched " at the seventh, I felt pretty sure 
he had been deeply impressed. I couldn't wait for 
him to volunteer his joy, so, while walking home, 
I tried to extort it. You have to pry enthusiasm 
out of an Englishman with a jemmy. 

" Baseball is very exciting and requires skilful 
playing — I can see that," he said. " But I prefer 
cricket. It is better suited to the English nature. 
We could never learn to play baseball well because 
we are not made for it. It is too impulsive. It 
requires things to be done in too much of a hurry. 
There is no time to think them over. And then, you 
see, cricket means much more to us than just two or 
three hours' sport in the open air. It is our way of 
building and training character. Wellington, who 
defeated Napoleon, said that Waterloo was won 
on the playing-fields of Eton — our famous public 
school. Do you know what Wellington meant by 
that ? He meant that the tenacity, the sticking-to- 



22 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

it, the honourable fighting, the never-say-die spirit, 
that enabled the British Army at Waterloo to 
conquer, were the fruits of the lessons the lads of 
England learn on the cricket-field. They learn there 
to ' play the game,' calmly, coolly, unexcitedly. 
They are taught to play hardest when the luck seems 
to be running against them the most. * Play up, and 
play the game,' says one of our schoolboy recita- 
tions, as familiar to English youths as ' Paul 
Revere' s Ride,' or ' The Village Blacksmith,' or 
' Barbara Frietchie ' is to American boys." 

" No," continued my English pal, " we'll stick 
to cricket. It is slow and methodical and old- 
fashioned. The rules are very strict and never 
changed for the purpose of speeding up the game or 
making it more thrilling. We play it as our grand- 
fathers played it, because it breeds in us the 
conservatism and caution which, we like to think, 
are the bedrock on which the British Empire has 
been built up. Cricket shows us how to ' play the 
game ' — how to rejoice reasonably when we win, 
how to take defeat and punishment without 
whimpering when we lose." 

I have told you all this not for the purpose of 
weaning you from baseball to cricket — it would be a 
national calamity if the United States Army and 
Navy went home and turned their back on baseball. 
I just want to make you understand, if I can, how 
cricket, as the traditional athletic pursuit of Young 
England, inspired the Britishers to " play the 



"PLAYING THE GAME" 23 

game " in August, 1914, when the British Empire 
and Civilisation in general were confronted by the 
supreme crisis in human history. The German 
propaganda in the United States tried to make us 
believe that England declared war on Germany 
because John Bull was jealous of Germany's trade 
successes in the markets of the world. Even the 
Germans know now that that was a lie. They have 
heard from the Kaiser's own Ambassador in 
London, Prince Lichnowsky, that the British 
Government worked tooth and nail till the last 
minute to preserve peace. England proposed to 
settle the quarrel between Austria, Serbia and 
Russia by arbitration. But the Kaiser was all 
dressed up and had nowhere to go. So he went to 
war. 

England went to war because her name was 
signed to a treaty which guaranteed the neutrality 
of Belgium. When you keep to your treaty obliga- 
tions — when you look upon a solemn international 
agreement as a bond of honour and not as a " scrap 
of paper " — you play the game. It would not be 
" cricket " to do anything else. So Sir Edward Grey 
and Mr. Lloyd George and the other statesmen who 
were at the helm of British affairs in August, 1914, 
remembered the first maxim of life which cricket 
teaches to Englishmen — to stick to the rules, to 
fight when an honourable cause requires you to 
fight, and to keep on fighting, hard but cleanly, till 
you have the other fellow underneath or are knocked 



24 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

out yourself. England did not rush into war. She 
thought it over a long time — so long that right up to 
the eleventh hour there was still considerable doubt 
whether she would " go in." Cricket, you see, taught 
her statesmen the importance of never going off 
half-cocked. But when they had weighed all the 
pros and cons of the situation — slowly, deliberately, 
thoroughly — Old England took the leap, for better 
or for worse. She decided to play the game. She 
determined to avenge Germany's violation of 
Belgium. It was cricket. 

The British Navy, of course, was ready. If it 
hadn't been, you and I might not be here to-day — 
you to read, or I to tell, the story. But England's 
decision to fight — to help France, to protect Belgium 
— meant that she had to go up against not only the 
Naval forces of Germany, but to jump in on land and 
face the mightiest Military Power that then existed 
anywhere in the world. England as a factor in a 
land war in which armies of millions were already 
engaged looked like a flea-bite. No wonder that the 
Kaiser spoke of " the contemptible little British 
army." Germany had anywhere from 4,000,000 to 
6,000,000 trained soldiers to call upon. England had 
ready for fighting overseas about 4 per cent, of the 
number of troops actually mobilised in Germany. 
Yet on August 17, less than two weeks after England 
made up her mind to play the game, the " First 
Seven Divisions " had arrived in France, fully 
equipped with horses, guns, ammunition and all the 



"PLAYING THE GAME" 25 

other vast trappings of an Expeditionary Force. It 
was a record in transport which was never ap- 
proached even in our own land of Hustle. A week 
later the British Army was in battle position before 
the German hordes at Mons, in Belgium, fiercely 
engaged in a struggle to stem the progress of 
overwhelmingly superior forces. 

Here and there in England to-day you will en- 
counter Tommies and officers who wear a rainbow- 
like strip of ribbon on their breasts. It is a simple 
combination of red, white and blue, fading one into 
another. Tommy Atkins calls it the " Go'-bli' 
me " ribbon — the Cockney for a swear-phrase 
which in plain English says, " God blind me." 
Every time I pass a man adorned with the Mons 
Ribbon — for that is what the " Go'-bli' me " 
strip is officially called — I feel like taking off 
my hat to him. For the British Expeditionary 
Force at Mons withstood as ferocious an onslaught 
as any army in the annals of war ever had to face. 
The Kaiser had ordered " the British Contemp- 
tibles " to be wiped off the earth. Two full 
German Army Corps and two Cavalry Divisions 
were hurled against the troops of General Sir John 
French. The terrific battle grew in fury and bloodi- 
ness from minute to minute. Within twenty-four 
hours of taking the field, the British were locked in 
a grapple for life or death with the crack regiments 
of the most highly-trained army in Europe. The 
British did not yield. They died but did not 



26 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

surrender. They took frightful punishment, giving 
it, too, in such kind as their inferior strength 
permitted, but on the third day of the battle, so 
magnificent had been their resistance, the Germans 
threw in three more Army Corps, making five 
altogether, besides a reserve corps. With these 
tremendous odds against them, sole salvation for 
the British lay in retreat, and, fighting tenaciously, 
General French decided to extricate what was left 
of his little Army. The fields around Mons were 
by this time richly drenched with the best blood 
of England, for it had cost the " Contemptibles " 
dearly to " play the game." It was due to 
nothing but the superhuman heroism of General 
French's remaining forces that they were not 
crushed by the masses of Germans hurled against 
them. It became known afterwards that the 
Kaiser's legions practically staked their all on wiping 
out the British Army. So the escape of its gallant 
remnant from Mons was a military feat of skill and 
glory. 

Thus before the great war for Liberty was a 
month old England lived up splendidly to its 
century-old tradition of playing the game. Without 
any obligation, save the greatest and most sacred of 
all — that of honour and of loyalty to friends in need 
— England not only flung all she had into the furnace 
of war, but prepared forthwith to fling more and 
more, and if need be all she had, into its consuming 
fires. Every man and every gun lost at Mons was 



"PLAYING THE GAME" 27 

replaced practically while the retreat was still in 
progress. 

In the knapsack of each soldier who now went 
forward to the fray was a message from Lord 
Kitchener, the new Minister of War, with instruc- 
tions that it should be kept in the active- service 
pay-book. The message was as follows : — 

" You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the 
King to help our French comrades against the 
invasion of a common enemy. You have to 
perform a task which will need your courage, 
your energy, your patience. Remember that the 
honour of the British Army depends on your 
individual conduct. 

" It will be your duty not only to set an example 
of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire, but 
also to maintain the most friendly relations with 
those whom you are helping in the struggle. The 
operations in which you are engaged will, for 
the most part, take place in a friendly country, 
and you can do your own country no better 
service than in showing yourself in France and 
Belgium in the true character of a British soldier. 

" Be invariably courteous, considerate, and 
kind. Never do anything likely to injure or 
destroy property, and always look upon looting 
as a disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with 
a welcome and to be trusted. Your conduct must 
justify that welcome and that trust. 

" Your duty cannot be done unless your health 
is sound. So keep constantly on your guard 
against any excesses. In this new experience 



28 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

you may find temptations in both wine and 
women. You must entirely resist both tempta- 
tions, and, while treating all women with perfect 
courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy. 

" Do your duty bravely, 

" Fear God, 

" Honour the King." 

It was in this spirit, with these orders, that the 
boys of England went forth in 1914, as you are now 
going forth — as Crusaders for the Right, each 
remembering what he had learned on the cricket- 
field : that come victory, come defeat, men must 
always " play the game," giving hard, taking man- 
fully, and battling with clean hands, in order that 
when triumph comes it may be deserved. 



CHAPTER III 



THE BRITISH NAVY 



When Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign 
Secretary, declared in his memorable speech in 
the House of Commons on August 3, 1914, that 
England had no intention of " running away from 
the obligations of honour " toward Belgium and 
France, he added : 

" We are prepared. We are prepared for the 
consequences that may arise from the attitude 
we have adopted. We are ready to take our 
part." 

What Grey meant was that " Our sure shield," 
as the Britishers call their Navy, was ready. It's 
a way they've had in the Navy for 900 years, for 
since William the Conqueror came from Normandy 
in 1066, British soil has never been trodden by an 
invader. The geographical date which you and I, 
as American schoolboys, best remembered was 1492, 
when Christopher Columbus hiked across the Atlan- 
tic to an unimagined destination and made the most 
important discovery in the world's history. The 



30 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

date that every British schoolboy knows by heart is 
1066. It is well that he does, for it marks the 
historical fact that for nearly nine centuries this 
little bunch of islands in the North Sea — whose 
total area of 121,000 odd square miles is smaller 
than that of our State of New Mexico — has not only 
been preserved from the ignominy and horrors of 
invasion, but has become the centre of a Common- 
wealth of great Nations. On its vast territories in 
two hemispheres the sun never sets. Its 13,150,000 
square miles girdle the globe and 450,000,000 souls 
acknowledge the Democratic sovereignty of the 
British Crown. Millions of them have been killed 
and maimed in the defence of their gigantic realm 
during the past four years of bloodshed and tears. 
But not one solitary inch of it has ever been soiled 
by German invasion. Do you know the reason 
why ? The answer is, the British Navy. 

I have set myself the task of sketching in a short 
chapter a subject to which some day an entire ency- 
clopaedia will be devoted — the story of the British 
Navy since 1914. But we Yanks have a gift for 
grasping the essentials of a thing if its outstanding 
features are put before us. That is all I intend to 
try. Do you realise, for example, that nearly two 
million American troops have been safely landed 
" Over There " mainly because Great Britain 
commands the seas ? 

Up to October, 1918, 1,766,160 United States 
soldiers crossed the ocean, bound for France. 



THE BRITISH NAVY 31 

During the summer and autumn of this year 
they came at the average rate of 300,000 a month, 
or 10,000 a day. With the exception of the 291 
lives we lost when the Germans torpedoed the 
Tuscania, that gigantic feat of transport, like which 
there has been nothing in history, was accomplished 
as serenely as if those footpads of the sea, U-boats, 
had never been invented. More than half of our 
troops have been transported in vessels of the 
British Mercantile Marine, but sixty per cent, 
of the total number were escorted across the 
Atlantic by the United States Navy. I know 
with what joy and pride you have seen the Stars 
and Stripes flapping from our own warships 
which have convoyed you to Europe, or through 
the danger zone around the British Isles. I know 
the sense of security their proximity inspired 
in you. Yet even the United States Navy could 
not have played its great part if the British Fleet 
had not cinched its command of the sea at the 
outset of the war and held it unchallenged from that 
hour to this. Admiral Sims and the United States 
naval forces now operating in European waters — 
an Armada of more than 250 vessels and 45,000 
officers and men — would have had urgent business 
nearer home. 

You and I and General Pershing's army are 
safe and sound in Europe to-day because Britannia 
still " rules the waves." Only once during the 
entire war — at the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 



32 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

1916 — has the Kaiser's Fleet made a serious 
attempt to break out of the iron ring which the 
British Navy so relentlessly keeps drawn around 
the German coasts. The Germans' object on that 
occasion — the " enterprise," as they described it, 
on which they set out — was to contest and demolish 
British supremacy at sea. If the Germans had 
accomplished their purpose, the war would have 
come to a sudden and disastrous end for Liberty's 
cause. There would have been no occasion for 
America to " come in." There would have been 
nothing to " come in " for. We should have had 
to face single-handed and alone a Europe of which 
Germany was the indisputable master. But her 
" enterprise " was wrecked. Admiral Beatty gave 
the German Fleet, though at cruelly heavy cost to 
his own in ships and men, such a frightful mauling 
that the Germans have never once since then 
dared to show their nose in any way that would 
enable the British to take a second crack at them. 
Now and then their destroyers have dashed into 
the North Sea on raids, always turning tail as 
soon as danger was scented. But their so-called 
High Seas Fleet has not looked for a stand-up 
fight for the last two years. Whenever the Ger- 
mans are ready to repeat their " enterprise," they 
will find Beatty (and Sims) ready, too. To date 
they have evinced no taste for another dose of the 
medicine they got at Jutland. 

Every once in a while I hear Britishers asking, 



THE BRITISH NAVY 33 

;< What is the Navy doing ? " Americans frequently 
ask the same thoughtless question. People know 
what the British Army is doing because its heroic 
deeds are recorded in the open, day by day, by men 
who are given that special task. The limelight is on 
the Army all the time. But the Navy has to work 
in silence and out of sight. Only on those rare 
occasions when German men-of-war appear on the 
surface of the sea, are we reminded that the British 
Navy is on the job. Yet it is on the job day and 
night, in sunshine and storm, summer and winter, 
always and everywhere. Lord Nelson, England's 
immortal sailor, whose one-armed effigy stands 
eternal sentinel on the tall column which bears his 
name in London's Trafalgar Square, said that in 
Naval warfare " Time is everything ; five minutes 
make the difference between a victory and a 
defeat." So while the European storm-clouds were 
gathering, on July 29, 1914, the British Navy took 
Time by the forelock, moved silently from its moor- 
ings on the West coast and assembled at strategic 
anchorages in the East and North. Henceforward 
the Navy became known as " The Grand Fleet," 
an unexampled organisation of fighting strength ; 
and from that moment every possibility of Ger- 
many's winning the war vanished. She had lost 
her one conceivable chance of securing the com- 
mand of the sea. It is our own celebrated naval 
expert, Admiral Mahan, you know, who has shown 
that Sea Power is the decisive factor in war. When 

D 



34 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Britain, without firing a shot, took action that 
assured Allied supremacy at sea, Germany's hope 
of enslaving civilisation and imposing upon it the 
rule of Brute Force was shattered and wrecked. 

What has the British Navy done in the four years 
that have intervened ? 

To begin with, first and foremost, it has 
effectually baffled the hopes and plans of 
Germany to win the war with U-boats. 

Let me say right here that the Britishers are the 
first to acknowledge that the American Navy has 
proved itself a friend in need, and a very efficient 
one. It has had an important hand in smashing 
up the U-boat campaign. When Admiral Sims 
and our first destroyer flotilla came to England in 
the Spring of 1917, the submarine war was in full 
blast. More than 1,000,000 tons of Allied shipping 
were sunk in April of that year. Well one 
thing is dead sure — the sinkings " curve " has 
been bending even more markedly in the wrong 
direction for Germany since American naval forces 
have co-operated in fighting the submarine. Some 
day we'll know just how many U-boats that never 
got back home had Sims's chasers and depth- 
charges and mine- barrage to thank for their fate. 
We shall be proud of the figures and of the deeds of 
heroism and skill which they represent. Sub- 
marines have continued to cause enormous damage 
to British and Allied shipping. They are not yet 



THE BRITISH NAVY 35 

killed off, but they have failed in their main object, 
which was to starve England, destroy British sea 
power, and keep American troops from reaching 
France. As the British Prime Minister puts it, 
" the U-boat has ceased to be a 'peril and is now only a 
nuisance." 

In addition to defeating the submarine campaign, 
the British Navy has : 

Blockaded Germany and bottled up the 
German Navy. 

Driven German commerce from the sea. 

Preserved the British Empire from in- 
vasion. 

Brought Germany to the verge of starva- 
tion. 

Enabled the British Empire to wage war 
in ten different parts of the world. 

Kept the high seas open for the legitimate 
service of mankind. 

Made ultimate defeat of Germany abso- 
lutely certain, no matter how long 
delayed. 

These are the facts about the British Navy. Now 
let me give you a few figures. " Figures talk," we 
Americans say. None ever talked more eloquently 
than these. The British Navy has : 

Increased its total tonnage from 2,500,000 

to 8,000,000. 
Patrolled incessantly the 140,000 square 

nautical miles of the North Sea. 

d 2 



36 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Steamed in one month alone (June, 1918) 
8,000,000 miles. 

Sunk, destroyed or captured more than 
150 German submarines. 

Raised its personnel from 145,000 to 
450,000. 

Enabled the safe transport of 20,000,000 
men, 2,000,000 horses and mules, 
500,000 vehicles, 25,000,000 tons of 
war munitions and stores to British 
fronts throughout the world, 
51,000,000 tons of oil and fuel, and 
130,000,000 tons of food and other 
material. 

Armed and maintained 3,500 auxiliary 
patrol boats, as against less than 20 
when war began. 

Enabled food for the 46,000,000 inhabi- 
tants of Great Britain and Ireland to 
be brought from oversea, despite 
the furious German U-boat campaign 
whose principal object was to "choke " 
them into submission. 

Kept Britain's 8,000,000 odd soldiers and 
sailors well fed and well armed, no 
matter how distant the field in which 
they were fighting. 

Made possible the uninterrupted supply of 
munitions, food and coal needed by the 
armies, navies, and 75,000,000 inhabi- 
tants of France and Italy. 



THE BRITISH NAVY 37 

This is what the British Navy has done. Think 
over it carefully, and you will rightly come to the 
conclusion that but for the British Fleet the war 
might have been over and won by Germany months, 
even years, ago. Truly the Prime Minister, Lloyd 
George, has said : " Unless the Allies had been com- 
pletely triumphant at the outset of the war at sea, no 
efforts on land would have saved them. The British 
Fleet is mainly responsible for that complete triumph" 

The symbol of the British Navy is a bulldog. It 
has fought like a bulldog every time it had a 
chance to show its teeth. I would need a whole 
chapter of this booklet merely to catalogue the 
names of the British men and boys of " the bulldog 
breed " who have won heroes' laurels in the long 
and grim struggle at sea. The fights put up by 
destroyer crews, in desperate melees with German 
submarines and torpedo-boats, will supply material 
some day for thrilling and glorious tales. Whether 
opportunity comes to him to distinguish himself 
or not, every mother's son in the British Navy 
has perpetually in his mind's eye the signal that 
Nelson flew at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 : 
" England expects this day that every man will do 
his duty." Admiral Hood and the gallant 6,000 or 
7,000 officers and men who went down with their 
ships in the Battle of Jutland did their duty. 
" Jack " Cornwell, a ship's boy, who lost his life in 
that same glorious scrap, sticking to his post to the 
last second, showed the stuff that British sailor-lads 



38 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

are made of. Nineteen-year-old midshipman 
Donald Gyles, of the destroyer Broke who single- 
handed drove off six burly Germans who attempted 
to board his ship, was a chip of the old block. 
Captain Fryatt, of the North Sea mercantile service, 
whom the Germans captured, tortured and mur- 
dered, will be for all time a token of the bravery 
that inspires the sea-dogs of the British race. The 
thousands of fishermen of Britain who are sweeping 
mines throughout the vast stretch of sea from 
Shetland to Greenland, from Greenland to Iceland, 
from Iceland to the coast of Norway — " the most 
savage waters in the world, always angry, resenting 
the intrusion of Man by every device known to 
Nature " — do their duty, unseen, unsung, unknown. 
The brawny sailors, thanks to whose competent care 
and indifference to danger so many of you were 
brought in safety to this side of the world — the tars 
who man the passenger and food ships, the muni- 
tion-carrying freighters, the huge troop -transports 
— these, too, as none knows better than yourselves, 
are doing their duty. 

The U-boat campaign is aimed principally, as you 
know, at the British Mercantile Marine. Among 
that splendid service the German pirates have 
claimed many victims. When I recall the names of 
the Lusitania, and the Sussex, and the Arabic, and 
all the other vessels which have been torpedoed, you 
will know what I mean when I refer to the terrors 
which the British merchant service has so bravely 



THE BRITISH NAVY 39 

faced. But the Germans made another of their 
bad guesses about British character when they 
thought that their murderous torpedoes would scare 
the British sailor from the sea. It has had only one 
effect on that bluff and hardy mariner. It has 
made him hate the word German with a fury that 
the authors of U-boat warfare will rue for the rest 
of their damnable lives. I should not like to be a 
member of the crew of the first German ship that 
pokes its nose into a British harbour after the war. 
Some welcome is in pickle for that bunch, believe me. 

When danger calls, the British Navy is always 
there. In April, 1918, it was decided to sink some 
old ships, partly laden with concrete, in order to seal 
up the Germans' principal U-boat nests, the Belgian 
harbours of Zeebrugge and Ostend. It was a cer- 
tain chance for glory — and death, and everybody 
realised that the men chosen to carry out the 
expedition had a through ticket to Davy Jones's 
locker. Yet three times as many British sailors 
volunteered for the job as were needed. The Hobson 
tradition, established by American sailors in 
Santiago harbour in 1898, prevails throughout 
the British sea service. Though U-boats make life 
at sea as dangerous as the front-line trenches, the 
Mercantile Marine has more boys than it can use for 
eighteen months ! So much for the effect of sub- 
marines on Young Britain's nerve. 

And then there is the aviation branch, the sleep- 
less eye, of the Grand Fleet. German aircraft, both 



40 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Zeppelins and aeroplanes, have shown truly enough 
that England " is no longer an island." But the 
impunity with which German sky pirates used to 
visit and harass these shores is a thing of the past. 
They cannot, of course, be kept away altogether. 
Yet on the occasion of their last attempt to murder 
sleeping women and babes on British soil — it was in 
August of this year — the Germans discovered to 
their cost and chagrin that the British Navy has a 
punch in the air as well as on the sea. A Zeppelin 
squadron, commanded by the enemy's most skilful 
airship pilot, Captain Strasser, who had raided 
England often before, was driven from the East 
coast when it tried to approach and sent scurrying 
back across the North Sea battered and burning. 
The squadron's flagship, with Strasser and his crew, 
was pursued 40 miles out to sea, then attacked at 
close-range by airmen of the Grand Fleet's air force, 
and finally sent crashing into the sea, a flaming- 
wreck. It was a Jutland in the sky. Another 
German " enterprise " had been nipped in the bud. 
The German propaganda has dinned incessantly 
into the world's ears that the Kaiser is fighting to 
secure and assure " the freedom of the seas." The 
Germans try to excuse the tyranny of Militarism and 
its menace to Civilisation by shrieking that " Prus- 
sian Militarism " is no worse than " British 
Navalism." It has only been since 1914 that the 
Germans have discovered that the seas are not 
" free." Prior to then they were as " free " to 



THE BRITISH NAVY 41 

German ships and as open to their peaceful activi- 
ties as they were to the ships of the rest of the 
world. The leviathans of Hamburg and Bremen 
entered the ports of Liverpool, Dover, Plymouth 
and Southampton, Cape Town and Sydney, Mon- 
treal and Vancouver, Bombay, Singapore, and 
Kingston — wherever the Union Jack flew — as 
" freely " as British ships themselves. German 
shipping, indeed, grew fat and prosperous because of 
the complete freedom of the seas. 

It was Admiral Mahan, the American whom I 
have already quoted, who pointed out that " con- 
ceptions of representative government, law and 
liberty prevail in North America from the Arctic 
Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, because the command of the sea at the 
decisive era belonged to Great Britain." If it had 
not, Napoleon's sway might have been established 
over what is now Democratic North and South 
America ; and if the same command of the sea did 
not belong to the same Great Britain at this hour, 
that imitation Napoleon, that would-be but now 
sorely-chastened world-conqueror, William II. of 
Potsdam, would even now be stretching his blood- 
smeared tentacles across the hemisphere which 
the Monroe Doctrine stakes out as American for all 
time. 

" I shall stand no nonsense from America after 
the war," said the Kaiser to Mr. Gerard at Berlin. 

Which means, if it means anything, that the guns 



42 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

of the Grand Fleet, the bulldogs which bark when 
Beatty gives the word, have stood during the past 
four years not only between German aggression and 
the British Isles, but between that hideous tyranny 
and the security of our own beloved United States. 
That is something else that the British Navy has 
done. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE BRITISH ARMY 



When the Britishers declared war on Germany 
in August, 1914, their standing army — the troops 
they had ready to send abroad as an Expeditionary 
Force — numbered roundly about 160,000. It was 
a small army, measured by modern standards, but 
as the British barrack-yard ditty puts it, " A Little 
British Army Goes a Dam Long Way." 

Meantime more than 7,500,000 men have 
been enrolled. Of that mighty total there have 
been lost in killed alone more than five times 
the number of the original Expeditionary Force, 
or 800,000. Some estimates place the total 
of killed even higher and assert that 900,000 
Britishers have "gone West." 

I can almost hear you gasp when you read these 
figures ; and well you may, for there is not one 
American out of a hundred who realises how lavishly 
British blood has been poured out in the common 
cause. What Americans have been told incessantly 

43 



44 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

during the past four years is that England was pre- 
pared to fight " to the last Frenchman." As soon 
as Uncle Sam waded into the fray, the German pro- 
paganda varied its deceitful tune and said that 
England would fight " to the last American." 

Sometimes the German hot-air merchants put it 
this way : " England is playing safe. She always 
does. It's her game to let the other fellows get 
killed and save her own skin." A lot of us believed 
these tales. Some Americans believe them yet. 

What are the facts ? British casualties in 
officers and men have been as follows :— 

August, 1914, to the end of 

1915 550,000 

In the year 1916 650,000 

In the year 1917 800,000 

In six months of 1918 
(estimated) 500,000 



2,500,000 



In other words, far from " playing safe," the 
Britishers' casualties have amounted during the 
first four years of the war to roundly one-third of 
their entire army. 

America is properly proud o± the great 
army she has dispatched to France. By July 
4, 1918, it was a million in round numbers. 
But Britain had by then already LOST 



THE BRITISH ARMY 45 

nearly a million in dead. I have not exag- 
gerated these figures. They are not official, 
but have been computed by competent autho- 
rities. We know some of the details. During 
one month in France in 1917 the Britishers 
had 27,000 men KILLED. In the first 
twelve months of the war they had 6,660 
officers and 95,000 men KILLED. During 
the month of April this year, as the result of 
the great battles which began on March 21, 
1918, they had more than 10,000 casualties 
among officers alone. 

In all candour, it is not our fault that we believed 
for so long that the Britishers were not " doing their 
bit." It was their fault. They didn't tell us. 
They were themselves aware that they were doing 
their full duty, but they didn't think it worth while 
to say anything about it. For months and months 
after the war began the Britishers fought it in the 
dark, as far as the outside world was concerned. 
The Britishers are long on self-depreciation. When 
I lived in Berlin an English-owned Luna Park Com- 
pany had a red-blooded American advertising-man. 
He considered that it was his duty to make the Park 
known far and wide by every means available. 
One day he rushed into the manager's office, bub- 
bling with enthusiasm, and announced that after 
weeks of effort he had secured permission to put up 
an electric flash sign 50 feet high and 150 feet across 
in Potsdamer-Platz — a district like 42nd and Broad- 



46 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

way. The American expected his English manager 
to explode with joy. He did nothing of the sort. 
He lit a fresh cigarette, thought for a minute or. two, 
and then said : "But don't you think a sign of that 
kind will be a bit conspicuous ? " 

Now, that is exactly the British point of view 
where their own deeds and virtues are concerned. 
They do not believe in making them conspicuous. 
They expect people to take them for granted. So 
it has been with their war achievements. Though 
the little British Army that fought at Mons won 
glory enough to last the nation for all time, little 
more was said about it than if Mons had been a 
sham battle on Salisbury Plain. Britishers from 
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, 
Newfoundland, from all the Dominions oversea, 
were pouring across the seven seas by the shipload to 
fight for King, Liberty, and Motherland. From the 
great Empire of India native troops led by rajahs 
rushed to arms and to the strange and far-off 
battlefields of France because the issues at stake 
meant as much for Calcutta, Bombay, or Delhi as 
they did for London, Liverpool, Toronto, Mel- 
bourne, or Capetown. From the cities, towns 
and hamlets of England, Scotland, Wales, and 
Ireland the Britishers who inhabited their 
own Isles flocked to the colours in myriads. 
But the Britishers didn't advertise this glorious 
news. 

Meantime, while " Kitchener's Army " of volun- 



THE BRITISH ARMY 47 

teers was being hurriedly recruited and trained, the 
British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium 
was fighting for its very life. Not only was it handi- 
capped by inferior numbers, but it was compelled to 
face the crack divisions of the Kaiser's Army so 
short of guns and shells that it will for ever remain 
a miracle that it was not wiped out of existence in 
the first ninety days of the war. It was well sup- 
plied with only one thing — unbreakable courage. In 
October around Ypres (in Belgium) the British 
Army, still hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned 
and outshelled, was engaged in as ferocious a 
struggle with the Germans as the history of war 
records. The Germans were making their first 
desperate bid for Calais and the coast of the English 
Channel, in the hope of attacking by land, sea 
and air their " grimmest and most stubborn foe — 
England." Ypres was pounded into a shell. The 
countryside for miles in every direction was ferti- 
lised red by the blood of British soldiers, who fell in 
thousands. But Ypres did not fall. Above its 
shattered fragments the Union Jack still flies. The 
road to Calais remains barred. Again and again the 
Germans have tried to gain it, but never so fiercely 
or at such terrible cost to the defenders as in those 
soul -trying days of October and November, 1914. 

How many Americans know the story of Mons 
and Ypres ? In battle glory they reduce to insig- 
nificance anything that happened at Waterloo. Yet 
the Britishers did not shout about them. It was 



48 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

not their way. They had helped to save Civilisa- 
tion — that was all. But nobody in England 
thought it important enough to bluster about for 
the benefit of foreign countries. Nobody saw any 
use in letting the outside world know the glorious 
news that from every nook and corner of the 
Empire the British clans were gathering. No- 
body considered it worth his while to make known 
the fact that the British Lion was rousing himself 
slowly, but determinedly, for a fight to the finish. 
Nobody found it advisable to let people know that 
the British Fleet had already won the war at sea. 
Nobody said one solitary word about any of these 
things. To a large extent the British Censor 
wouldn't allow anything to be said. But to a still 
larger extent nothing was said because the British, 
as Kipling remarked of Lord Roberts, " don't 
advertise." I visited the United States in 
February and March, 1915. The war had been on 
for nearly eight months. The British casualty lists 
were already enormous. John Bull was in it up to 
his neck — in blood and tears — but not grumbling. 
What was it Americans asked me when I got home ? 
They wanted to know " When is England going to do 
something ? " It is the Britishers' passion for self- 
depreciation that caused us to think they were 
asleep at the switch. 

Now I am going to tell you, in the eloquent 
language of figures, just what the Britishers have 
done in the way of raising an army. 



THE BRITISH ARMY 49 

They began the war with an Expeditionary 
Force, as I have already explained, of 
160,000. By the end of 1917, after three 
and a quarter years, the British Army had 
grown to almost fifty times that size, or 
7,500,000. The Germans tried to make the 
world believe that England was fighting not 
only "to the last Frenchman" but "to the 
last Colonial." The figures show up this 
libel, too, in its true colours. Out of the 
7,500,000 men provided by the Empire 
up to the end of 1917, 5,600,000 or 74*7 
per cent.— about three-quarters— came from 
England, Scotland, "Wales and Ireland. The 
proportions were as follows : 



Per Cent, 
of Total. 



England 


4,530,000 . 


.. 604 


Scotland 


620,000 


83 


Wales 


280,000 


.. 3-7 


Ireland 


170,000 


23 


Australia ^ 






New Zealand 






Canada 


. 900,000 


120 


Newfoundland 
South Africa , 










India and othei 


• 




Oversea domi 


- 




nions 


1,000,000 


133 


Total 


7,500,000 . 


.. 1000 

E 



50 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

That is to say, the British Isles themselves — 
this little country that Texas could swallow up twice 
over and whose population isn't half as large as 
that of the United States — have raised even a 
bigger army than the 5,000,000-men establishment 
planned by us Americans ourselves. By July, 1918, 
Great Britain had raised more than 8,000,000 men 
for all the purposes of war. Reviewing the 
Britishers' achievement, their Prime Minister truly 
said that if the United States of America were to call 
to the Colours the same number in proportion to 
population it would mean very nearly 15,000,000 
men. 

Before I leave the statistical side of the British 
Army, I want to nail another German campaign lie. 
Since the war began the world has been familar with 
three kinds of fakes — plain lies, damned lies, and 
German propaganda. One of the propaganda lies 
that the Swindle Department of the Kaiser's 
Government loves to keep in circulation is that the 
Britishers systematically spare the hides of English 
soldiers and let the " Colonials " (Australians, 
Canadians, New Zealanders and other Dominion 
troops) do the dirty work and get killed. Once 
again there are figures which show at a glance what 
the facts are. Study this little table : — 



THE BRITISH ARMY 51 

Percentage of Population of British Empire 
and Percentage of Troops supplied by- 
Countries named : 





Population. 
Per Cent. 


Troops Raised. 
Per Cent. 


Casualties, 
Per cent. 


England 


... 62 


70-1 




Scotland 


8 


9 


86 


Ireland 


7 


ej 




Overseas 


... 23 


16 


14 



(This table does not include India.) 

You see that England, Scotland and Ireland con- 
tributed 85 per cent, of the troops raised, and 
suffered a fraction more than a corresponding quota 
of the losses. The Colonies furnished 16 per cent, of 
the men, and suffered 2 per cent, less of the casualties. 
Australian casualties to midsummer, 1918, worked 
out at about 7 \ per cent, of the total British losses ; 
Canada's casualties, at about 6£ per cent. The pro- 
portion of British casualties to Colonial casualties 
during the last half of 1917 per Division was 7 to 6. 

By the time this booklet reaches the hands of the 
men for whose information it was originally 
written — the American soldiers and sailors bound 
for or already in Europe — many of them will have 
made the acquaintance, face to face, of British 
soldiers and sailors. Other Yanks, to whose atten- 
tion I fondly hope the booklet may come, will have 
brushed shoulders with Tommies in the fighting- 
line. I shall not need to tell those Americans what 

E 2 



52 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

sort of scrappers the Britishers are. The best 
witnesses on that point would be German prisoners. 
Any Huns who have fought on the Western front 
could say things about Tommy Atkins far more 
eloquent and convincing than anything my faithful 
Waterman could put on paper. 

On August 8 and 9, 1918, when Haig's army 
smashed the crack corps of Hindenburg's forces and 
liberated Amiens, the Britishers delivered a blow 
that the Germans themselves described as " the first 
reverse we had suffered during the war." That is 
not quite true, for when the French and British won 
the first battle of the Marne in September, 1914, the 
Germans sustained a " reverse " from which they 
never entirely recovered. But the punch in the jaw 
that Tommy gave Fritz in August of this year was 
the first dose of the real stuff that the Britishers 
handed the Germans. It was the goods, because it 
represented the British Army at last in its full stride, 
fortified by four years' experience with every device 
of warfare, however devilish, that the German 
method of fighting had taught it to employ. 

The army that Haig sent into battle to relieve. 
Amiens took, in the single month of August, 

57,318 prisoners, including 1,283 officers ; 
657 guns, including over 150 " Heavies " ; 
5,750 machine-guns ; 
1,000 trench-mortars ; 

3 complete railway trains ; 
9 locomotives ; 



THE BRITISH ARMY 53 

Numerous complete ammunition and engineer- 
ing dumps, including hundreds of thousands 
of rounds of artillery and rifle ammunition, 
and war materials of all sorts. 

The British Army that gave the Germans that 
stinging uppercut was no longer the outnumbered, 
outgunned, outshelled Army that fought a forlorn 
hope at Mons in August, 1914. This August, 
superiority of strength and skill was on the British 
side. 

Thanks very largely to their magnificent equip- 
ment with aircraft and with that exclusively British 
invention, the tank — I think the tank is charac- 
teristically British because it is big, cumbersome, 
slow-moving and deadly once it gets started — the 
Tommies simply waded through the Germans. 
American troops fought with Haig, too, and there 
must be plenty of Yank eye-witnesses who can con- 
firm every word I am now setting down, viz., that 
on August 8 and 9 of 1918 a.d. the British Army 
showed once and for all that it is the equal of any 
fighting organisation that ever went into battle. 
It took the Britishers four years to get going, but 
" by the splendour of God," as their King Hal used 
to vow, they have done it. 

The British Army (supported and succoured al- 
ways by the British Navy, don't forget) has not been 
playing a merely defensive role on the blood-soaked 
plains of France and Belgium. It has fought in a 
dozen different places — in various parts of Europe, 



54 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Africa and Asia. It has conquered all the German 
Colonies overseas. To-day, with the Russians 
out of the war, the Britishers have to fight the 
Turkish army single-handed in Mesopotamia and 
Palestine. They helped to knock out the Bul- 
garians in Macedonia. They are rounding up 
the remnants of the German Army still at 
large in East Africa and the Cameroons. They 
rushed to the help of Italy last winter when 
the Austrians broke the Italian front. They 
sent troops across north-western Persia to occupy the 
great Russian oil-city of Baku, on the Caspian Sea, 
in order that a Germanised Russia, betrayed by the 
traitor-Bolsheviks, might not be the stepping-stone 
for a German lunge at the heart of India. In the 
far north of Russia, at Archangel, British troops 
were landed, to prevent Germany's seizure of 
Russia's one gateway to the Atlantic. At Vladi- 
vostok, on the Pacific Coast, British troops are in 
line alongside American, Japanese and gallant 
Czecho-Slovak contingents to preserve Siberia 
from the rapacious designs of Germany in that 
direction. In all theatres of war British armies 
up to August 19, 1918, had taken 224,787 prisoners, 
including 159,787 in France. 

The spoils of Napoleonic victory have not yet 
fallen to the Britishers' lot. But when the full story 
of the Great War is written, I believe its chroniclers 
will say that Britain bit off far more than Napoleon 
ever tried to chew — and chewed it. 



THE BRITISH ARMY 55 

By backing France for four long years, the British 
Army saved Europe. While we were getting ready, 
the Britishers held the fort — the fort from which 
you and they, marching shoulder to shoulder 
with our glorious and invincible French Allies, 
are now sallying forth to victory. 



CHAPTER V 



THE HOME ARMY 



Modern war is not merely a matter of soldiers, 
guns and ships. It has to be waged on two fronts, 
one just as important as the other — the fighting 
line and at home. The folks you khaki chaps left 
behind you — the tens of millions who don't wear 
uniforms, obtain commissions or reap any of the 
spectacular glory of war — are just as essential to 
conducting and winning the war as soldiers in the 
trenches or sailors in battleships. They make up 
the Home Army, without whose loyalty and industry 
the real army " Over There " would soon become 
useless. 

In previous chapters I have dealt with the regular 
Army and Navy of Great Britain. I would now like 
to tell you what the Home Army has done, for the 
achievements of the civilian population of these 
islands are as splendid and vital a contribution to 
Liberty's Cause as anything their fighting lads have 
accomplished. It is solely because this class 
of Britishers — men, women and children — have 

56 



THE HOME ARMY 57 

" carried on " patiently, stubbornly, for four 
hard years that the British Army and Navy are not 
only still intact, despite heavy losses, but are in 
every way stronger than ever. It is the devotion of 
the Home Army that has enabled the Government 
to build up a gigantic munition industry. British 
civilians have given freely of their money, subscrib- 
ing incessantly from their savings for War Loans 
and submitting without a whimper to heavy taxes 
on their incomes and on some of the principal 
necessities of life. They have tolerated uncom- 
plainingly the rationing of their food. They have 
accepted rigid control of their drink. Indeed, they 
have almost been put on the water-wagon. They 
have not objected to interference with the com- 
monest everyday liberties. They have put up, in 
short, with any and every thing deemed necessary to 
victory. The Germans have done all these things 
because they had to, and whined about it. The 
Britishers have done them because they wanted to, 
and took pride in doing so. 

I don't mean for a minute that Great Britain has 
transferred from the easy-going standards of peace 
to the grim conditions of war without kicking. They 
call it " grousing " over here, and there are just as 
many " grousers " to the square inch in these 
islands as there are kickers in other countries. 
When I say that the Britishers have " carried on " 
in a spirit of high-minded patriotism, I mean the 
great broad masses of the country, the over- 



58 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

whelming majority. I mean particularly the 
working classes, and I mean quite particularly the 
women-folk. British workers and British women 
have been splendid. They have borne the brunt 
magnificently. 

In your meanderings up and down England and 
Scotland and Wales you are meeting, I guess, 
many a Britisher who tells you he is " fed up " with 
the war. The chances are you'll hear Tommies 
home on leave say the same thing, especially lads 
with the Mons ribbon or chevrons, which indicate 
that they've been in the game going on four years 
or more. Yes, the Britishers are " fed up " 
with the war. Good Lord, who wouldn't be, after 
what they have gone through ? Do you suppose 
that we Yanks will be as eager, as " keen " (as the 
English say), about the war as we are now if 
Providence inflicts four years of it on us ? We shall 
be more than human if we are. But don't make the 
mistake of imagining that " fed up " means despair. 
It may mean that the Britishers are tired. War- 
worn they certainly are. Heaven knows, a rest is 
coming to them. But that does not mean they are 
ready to throw up the sponge. The piece of war 
slang that summarises the Britishers best is 
this bit of doggerel : " Are We Downhearted ? 
NO ! " 

As the war drags on from month to month, and 
from year to year, I often think of John Bull as a 
champion heavyweight pugilist, like our " John L.," 



THE HOME ARMY 59 

of immortal memory. " John L." faced many a 
tough antagonist in his day. Usually he knocked 
them out in the early rounds, but every once in a 
while he met a man who made him fight like Hell 
for a dozen rounds or more. The champion on 
these occasions had to stretch himself to the limit of 
his powers. One of his eyes was blackened. Good 
red blood oozed from his battered nose. He was 
black and blue at half a dozen places, but his wind 
was all right, his vision was not impaired, his arms 
could still shoot out rights, lefts and uppercuts, and he 
was firtnly on his legs. To rattle John L., the other 
fellow's seconds would call out : " Why don't you 
quit — you're groggy ! " And then the champion, 
by way of contemptuous retort, would hand his 
opponent a stiff er punch than any " John L." had 
yet delivered. The British — " exhausted," so the 
German Government told the German people — 
handed Hindenburg this Autumn the nastiest 
smacks in the eye that he has had -for many 
a day. John Bull gave Heinie a little of the 
John L. stuff. 

The Britishers' attitude toward the war — the atti- 
tude of the Home Army — reminds me, too, of the 
American Admiral in our 1812 war with England. 
When the Admiral was asked to surrender because 
his inferior squadron was badly mauled, he replied : 
" Surrender ? By God, I've only begun to fight ! " 
Yes, the Britishers have been badly mauled. But 
now that at last they face on something like equal 



60 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

terms, instead of bare-breasted, a foe which had 
been dolling up for war for half a century, they have 
" only begun to fight." 

The Britishers face the Germans on approxi- 
mately equal terms because they are to-day 
provided with the principal sinews of war — arms 
and ammunition — on a gigantic scale. While the 
Army and Navy were holding the foe at bay on 
land and sea, the Home Army created an industrial 
plant that has been well described as " the miracle 
of munitions." John Bull opposed the Mailed Fist 
of the Kaiser in 1914 with practically an ungloved 
hand. The original Expeditionary Force went into 
battle at Mons, I suppose, with about as many 
machine-guns per division as the German Army had 
per company. It was May, 1915 — ten months after 
the war started — before the Britishers discovered 
that they were righting Germany's high-ex- 
plosive shells with almost useless shrapnel. Our 
comrades-in-arms had paid dearly in life and trea- 
sure before they found that out, but it proved to be 
the turning-point of the war. Thereupon the British 
Government created a " Ministry of Munitions," 
which set itself the task not only of making up the 
deficiency from which the Army suffered, but of 
outstripping the superiority which the Germans so 
long enjoyed. 

The Britishers have done the trick. They have 
out-Krupped Krupps. To-day Britain is one im- 
mense arsenal, her man and woman power mobilised, 



THE HOME ARMY 61 

her industries placed upon a war footing, her every 
thought and energy concentrated upon the single 
task of supplying her fighting forces with their 
essential needs. About 2,500,000 men and 
1,000,000 women are now at work on munition- 
making — big guns, shells, rifles, small arms ammu- 
nition, aeroplanes, machine-guns, tanks, gas, and all 
the other junk required for " kanning the Kaiser." 
National arsenals (Government-owned munition 
works) have increased from three in 1914 to more 
than 180 in 1918. Private manufacturing firms 
engaged on munitions number over 10,000. " Con- 
trolled Establishments " (firms which give prece- 
dence to Government work and employ labour 
under conditions fixed by the Ministry of Munitions) 
total more than 5,000. 

The following table shows the comparative rate of 
output in the first four years of the war, with the 
figure 1 as a basis : 



Ammunition : 


1914-15 


1915-16 


1916-17 


1917- 


For light guns 


1 


5 


19 


15 


For medium guns 


1 


5 


25 


22 


For heavy guns 


1 


6 


70 


400 


For very heavy guns . 


1 


21 


220 


280 


Guns: 










Machine-guns 


1 


12 


39 


70 


Heavy guns and 










Howitzers 


1 


5 


27 


40 


Very heavy ditto 


1 


5 


13 


16 



Steel (million tons) 7 9 10 10 



62 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

To give you an idea of the rate at which the Home 
Army has turned out munitions, let me tell you that 
during the Somme offensive in 1916 Britain was 
issuing to her armies on the Western Front an 
amount of ammunition equal to the entire stock 
available for her land service at the outbreak of the 
war. During the battles of this year (1918) the 
British Army is firing more than double the volume 
of shells it used up on the Somme in 1916. The 
present rate of output, moreover, allows for the 
production next year of enough guns and shells to 
make the British artillery even stronger still in 
weight, intensity and striking power. 

During the first five weeks of the German offen- 
sive which compelled the British to retreat in March 
and April, 1918, from their hard-won positions on 
the Somme, the British lost nearly 1,000 field-guns 
and between 4,000 and 5,000 machine-guns — in- 
cluding captured and destroyed. The amount of 
ammunition lost in dumps amounted to some- 
thing between a week's and three weeks' total 
manufacture. These admissions are official. None 
the less, by the end of April all of these losses were 
more than made good, and there were actually more 
serviceable guns and ammunition available than when 
the battle opened. 

In aeroplane construction, too, the British have 
accomplished wonders. British factories are to-day 
building in a single week more flying-machines than 
they made during the whole of 1914 ; in a single 



THE HOME ARMY 63 

month, more than were made in the whole of 1915 ; 
and in three months more than in the whole of 1916. 
The output for the whole of 1918 will be several 
times what it was during 1917. 

These colossal achievements — there is no other 
description for them — are the result of two things : 
the Britishers' talent for organisation, mistakenly- 
thought to be a German monopoly, and the zeal and 
patriotism of British workers, especially women. 
Nine-tenths of the whole manufacture of shells are the 
result of the labour of women and girls who before the 
war had never even seen a lathe ! I feel like taking 
off my hat to every British lass I see in the brown 
or blue " kit " of a munition worker, or in the 
uniform of a 'bus -conductor, or driving an Army or 
Navy or Air Force motor-car, or doing any of the 
many other jobs that girls and women are holding 
down in order to liberate men for the fighting ser- 
vices. If you could see, as I have seen, British 
girls of 18, 20, or 23 at work in the great steel mills 
of Sheffield — at Hadfield's or Firth's — swinging 
110-lb. red-hot steel ingots into the hydraulic 
presses, unafraid, skilled, veritable daughters of 
Titan, you, too, would feel like saluting them ; 
for it is they who are mainly responsible for the 
fact that British heavy artillery is now able to 
pound the German line to a frazzle every time 
the guns bark. And remember that American 
artillery, too, is to a large extent supplied with shells 
which these British women and girls are making. 



64 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Germany hoped to choke the life out of England 
by means of the U-boat, that is to say by destroying 
so many ships that the British Isles could no longer 
import food or the other vital sinews of war. Thus 
the question of ships was the Britishers' chief 
problem, and here, too, the Home Army has 
worked wonders. The submarines have, indeed, 
played frightful havoc with the world's tonnage. 
Up to August 1, 1918, according to German official 
claims, the pirates had sunk 18,800,000 tons of ship- 
ping — Allied and neutral. That is rather more than 
the tonnage of the entire British Mercantile Marine 
when war broke out. The large majority of vessels 
sunk by U-boats has, of course, been British ship- 
ping. The Britishers tackled with characteristic 
tenacity the question of making good these serious 
losses. In 1917, 1,163,000 gross tons of merchant 
shipping were launched from British yards, as com- 
pared with 542,000 tons in the previous year, and 
1,919,000 tons during the last year of peace. Since 
1917 British shipbuilding has been speeded up even 
still more. In the quarter ended June 30 there was 
an increase of 78 per cent, over the figures for the 
corresponding three months of 1917. 

Hog Island and Seattle aren't the only places 
where shipbuilders know how to hustle. At the great 
Harland and Wolff yard at Belfast (Ireland) the 
other day an 8,000-ton " standard " ship was made 
ready for sea six days after launching, the usual 
time being six weeks. Remember that in addition 




[Elliott and Fry, Ltd. 
Major-General John Biddle, United States Army 
Commanding United States Forces in the United Kingdom 




\Daihi Mail pi 

London's Mighty Welcome to the Yanks, Trafalgai 
August 15th, 1917 



THE HOME ARMY 65 

to replenishing their Mercantile Marine, the 
Britishers have had to keep up their warship con- 
struction. Repair work alone, on Naval and Mer- 
cantile craft, has been a gigantic job. Damaged 
craft of all nations limps to British dry docks 
for overhauling. It is no wonder that the Britishers 
look to us to concentrate on new shipbuilding. 
They are confident that " Charlie " Schwab will 
deliver the goods, too. 

The primary necessities of war nowadays are 
" the two M's " — munitions and money. If you 
have to produce tons of munitions, you must put up 
tons of money. The Britishers have not failed in 
that direction. The figures are so fantastic as 
almost to baffle ordinary comprehension. They 
run not into mere millions, but into tens of billions. 
The war is now costing them about $40,000,000 a 
day. Up to April, 1918, it had cost them about 
$35,070,000,000. By April, 1919, it is estimated 
that the war bill will have reached fifty billion 
dollars 1 The Britishers are not only financing 
themselves but their European Allies as well. The 
Old Country (England, Scotland and Wales) is, as 
usual, bearing the burden for the whole Empire. 
Up to the end of July, 1918, Great Britain had 
advanced to her various Allies in Europe the 
fabulous sum of $7,010,000,000 — that is to say, 
more than seven billion dollars. To her Colonies 
(Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa 
and the rest) the Motherland had loaned another 

F 



66 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

billion — $1,042,500,000. The statement of her 
help to her Allies shows advances to 

Russia ... ... ... $2,840,000,000 

France ... ... ... 2,010,000,000 

Italy ... ... ... 1,565,000,000 

Belgium 

Serbia 

Greece 



Total ... ... $7,010,000,000 

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (the Secretary of 
the Treasury) explained the other day what " a 
thousand million pounds " (five billion dollars) 
really means. " It represents," he said, " the 
labour of ten million men for a whole year." That 
conveys some impression of what the British Home 
Army is doing in the way of providing money for 
the war. Never forget that it has been doing so 
not for a year and a half, like the United States, 
but for four years. It continues to " Pay, Pay, 
Pay," without a murmur. It puts up and shuts up. 

In the Summer of 1918 the British broke all 
their previous financial war records, indeed estab- 
lished a world's record, by purchasing more than 
$5,000,000,000 in National War Bonds. They 
did it in exactly ten months. No previous loan in 
any country ever placed so much actually new 
money at the disposal of the State. It beat even 
the best Liberty Loan record in the United 
States. Before that the world's record was held 
by the British War Loan of 1917, which yielded 



THE HOME ARMY 67 

- 
$4,742,295,000 in actual cash received. The National 

War Bond drive, which lasted from October, 1917, 
to August, 1918, surpassed that bumper figure 
by some $250,000,000. It was not a hip-hip- 
hurrah job of a week or a fortnight, mind you, with 
enthusiasm whipped up by all sorts of stunts. It 
represented regular, plugging, week-by-week invest- 
ment. It meant money given by the plain people — 
by the men, women, and even the children of the 
Home Army, who dug up their pounds, shillings and 
pence in order to let Germany know that Britain, 
far from being downhearted, is prepared to " carry 
on," whatever the cost. 

A nation raises money for war by two methods- 
loans and taxation. By loan the Britishers have 
raised since 1914 the colossal sum of $25,850,000,000. 
In addition they have imposed upon themselves 
special war taxation more drastic than anybody 
would ever have thought possible, amounting thus 
far to $9,220,000,000. The Britishers are paying 
income-tax at from 5Q cents to $2.65 on every five 
dollars they earn above the exemption limit. 
Think of that. The very rich man is paying over 
one-half of his income in income-tax and super-tax 
alone. Tax must be paid on war profits to the 
extent of 80 per cent, of the total. The cost of 
railway travelling has been raised by 50 per cent. 
Britishers are now about to tax themselves four 
cents on every 25 cents spent on luxury articles. 

Meantime the cost of living in Great Britain has 

F 2 



68 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

gone up enormously. The purchasing value of the 
sovereign ($5) for the necessaries of life has been 
reduced to about $3. The ordinary middle-class 
Briton, Avhose income has not gone up since 1914, is 
to-day practically in the position of having had it 
cut in half, so much has its buying-power decreased. 
Yet the nation continues to come forward with its 
earnings and savings more lavishly, more freely, 
more confidently than ever. 

But even more splendid than the manner in which 
they are giving of their toil and treasure is the un- 
complaining spirit in which the Britishers give of 
their life-blood. That's where their amazing 
" reserve " and composure stand them in good 
stead. Parents lose their second, third, fourth 
sons ; wives, their husbands ; children, their 
breadwinners. But nobody whimpers. Lips are 
only stiffened. It is Sparta reborn. 

The beginning of the fifth year of the war finds 
the Britishers going to it with bulldog deter- 
mination to " stick it " until they get the only kind 
of a peace they or we will ever accept — a peace that 
leaves the Allies completely victorious and Germany 
at our mercy. 



CHAPTER VI 

IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 

It will probably be a long time before the world 
decides upon the most appropriate name for the 
war. I still think that General Sherman's descrip- 
tion was the best for all wars. He called them 
" Hell." But as far as Germany is concerned, the 
best name would be " The War of Miscalculations," 
or " The War of Bad Guesses." When he cranked 
his mighty war-machine in 1914, the Kaiser mis- 
calculated right and left. His biggest miscalculation 
was the pipe-dream that the Britishers wouldn't 
fight. But even if they would some day be com- 
pelled to fight — to ward off the attack which Ger- 
many was so long preparing to launch — the Germans 
persistently led themselves to believe that the war 
would only be with England, Scotland and Ireland. 
This is the way they doped it out : — 

" The British Empire will collapse like a house of 
cards the moment the old country finds itself mixed 
up in a serious European war. Ireland will secede. 
India will revolt. Egypt will break away. Aus- 



70 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

tralia, Canada and New Zealand will immediately 
declare their independence. South Africa, still sore 
from the effects of the Boer War, will seize the 
opportunity for revenge. England the tyrant will 
find herself stranded and forsaken by her oppressed 
Colonies and Oversea Dominions, and one day they 
will fall into Germany's lap like ripe fruit. Germany 
is the rightful heir to the British Empire." 

Yes, that was the dope in Germany for years. I 
was there, and I know it. I heard it and I wrote 
about it. The people of Germany believed it. They 
read it day after day in their newspapers and political 
literature. If they were university students, they 
got it direct from their professors, who taught the 
youth of the Fatherland war and the glory of war just 
as thoroughly as they taught them philosophy, or 
zoology, or mathematics. The Germans are a very 
systematic nation. They plan out things carefully 
in advance. So one of their long-distance arrange- 
ments for " The Day " on which they hoped to 
smash the British Empire was the sowing of discord 
throughout the British territories oversea. German 
spies and German intriguers infested Ireland, India, 
Egypt and South Africa. Whenever there was a 
chance of stirring up old-time hatreds of England, 
these spies and intriguers got busy. It has been 
proved that wherever serious unrest has manifested 
itself in the British Empire during the war, Germans 
liberally supplied with German money were the 
niggers in the woodpile. But the funds were 



IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 71 

badly invested. They produced no results of corre- 
sponding value. Germany backed the wrong horse 
when she put her money on " British Empire 
Revolution " in the World- War Race. 

Take Ireland. Tens of thousands of Pershing's 
great army are Irish by birth or ancestry. I saw a 
statement the other day that 25 per cent, of the 
American troops are Roman Catholic. The vast 
majority of that number must be " Oirish lads." 
Ireland is not a happy land. It never has been. It 
is troublous by nature because, as a witty Irishman 
himself has said, " An Irishman doesn't know what 
he wants, and, be-jabers, he won't be happy till he 
gets it." Thanks mainly to the activities of Sinn 
Fein agitators during the war, certain misguided 
patriots have kept the spirit of unrest alive in 
Ireland. But how insignificant is their number, 
and how miserable the service they rendered their 
country, compared to the thousands of splendid 
Irish troops who have fought on the British side in 
France and elsewhere since the hour of the war's 
beginning ! The great Irish leader — taken away, 
unfortunately, in the midst of the war — John 
Redmond, made a memorable speech in Parliament 
on the eve of the war. He pledged his word that 
Ireland would remain loyal to Liberty's cause and 
do nothing to prevent Great Britain from fighting at 
full strength. Ireland would not secede, Redmond 
declared. Last year Redmond's own brother, Major 
Willie Redmond, fell in battle on the Western front, 



72 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

fighting for England and for Ireland. Long before 
that a typical young Irishman, a poor boy named 
Mike O'Leary, won the Victoria Cross for con- 
spicuous bravery in the field. There have been 
thousands of Willie Redmonds and Mike O'Learys, 
all Irish to the core, who have done their " bit " 
gallantly and are still doing it. They are imbued 
with the spirit that tore Tom Kettle, a brilliant 
young Irish lawyer, from a promising career in 
politics, and fired him with the determination to 
fight and die for Freedom's cause. Kettle was a 
deep-dyed Irish patriot. He was looked upon by 
many people as the future chieftain of the National- 
ist party. But he was filled with the solemn con- 
viction that no true Irishman could keep out of a 
fight against the nation branded by President 
Wilson as " the natural foe to liberty." So Tom 
Kettle got a commission in the Dublin Fusiliers and 
eventually died a hero's death in France. Irishmen 
like Redmond and Kettle know that a Hun victory 
in this war would mean the occupation of Ireland by 
Germany and the enslavement of the Irish people 
for all time under the heel of Prussian militarism. 
In 1914 and 1915 many Irish soldiers fell into 
German hands as prisoners of war. The Kaiser soon 
found out the kind of stuff these brawny sons of 
Erin are made of. He tried to jolly them into 
forming an " Irish Legion " of the German Army. 
He promised them swell green uniforms, with sham- 
rocks embroidered on the collars and harps on the 



IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 73 

caps. He said they might all get drunk on St. 
Patrick's Day at Germany's expense and otherwise 
maintain the glorious traditions of the Seventeenth 
of March. He told them they would be sent back 
to Ireland when the war was over, with their 
pockets lined with captured English gold. He 
held out all kinds of baits designed to induce Mike 
and Pat to be traitors. But the boys from Cork and 
Kilkenny, from Killarney and Tipperary, would 
stand for no bunk of that kind, however alluring. 
The Irish Guards, Irish Fusiliers, Connaught 
Rangers, Royal Dublins, Royal Munsters, Irish 
Rifles, Inniskillings, or men of other famous Irish 
regiments, whom Germany wanted to seduce, simply 
howled down the treacherous comrades who tried to 
make speeches to them in favour of the Kaiser. 
Those whom they couldn't howl down they beat up. 
The " Irish Legion " is still languishing in those 
abodes of horror known as German prison camps. 
Mike and Pat prefer the terrors of German cap- 
tivity to the glory of fighting for the Kaiser. 

I have told you about Ireland at this length 
because many of you are Irish by origin and because 
all Americans love the Irish. I was educated by 
Irish Catholic priests and one of the best friends I 
have in the world is Father John Cavanaugh, 
C.S.C., President of my Alma Mater of Notre Dame 
University, Indiana. I played baseball with " Jim " 
Burns and " Mike " Quinlan, who, like Cavanaugh, 
became priests and eminent figures in the American 



74 EXPLAINING THE .BRITISHERS 

educational world. The Very Rev. " Jim " Burns 
made a speech at a Catholic Convention in 'Frisco 
the other day. He said that the khaki uniform which 
British and American soldiers are now wearing " is 
the livery of God, and makes our sons and brothers 
soldiers of the Lord." 

At the same convention another Irish- American, 
John J. Barrett, speaking on Catholic loyalty, said : 

" We pledge our country our single-hearted 
allegiance. We entertain no scruples about the 
justice of her participation in the conflict. We 
approve the course she has taken in the crisis, 
and we would have had her take no other. We 
stand ready to promote our country's fortunes 
at the sacrifice of all our resources of human life 
and earthly possessions. With all our strength 
and mind and heart we pray for victory to the 
arms of our country and her gallant Allies. We 
hold no allegiance that conflicts with our love of 
the flag, and wherever it leads we are prepared 
to follow." 

When I read such things, I cannot help thinking 
that Irish-Americans to a man must profoundly 
regret that the Emerald Isle — that " Little Bit of 
Heaven " — has not played more of a man's-sized 
part in this struggle for civilisation and liberty. 

Where shall I begin to tell the story of the mag- 
nificent role Munich the great self-governing Do- 
minions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and 
South Africa have played as members of the British 



IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 75 

Empire ? Again, for lack of space, I shall have to 
confine myself to a few mere facts and figures. I 
would like to have devoted the whole book to them, 
for I know how fond you Yanks are of the husky 
boys from the Colonies. You rightly discern that 
they are very much like yourselves, in physique and 
temperament. They are wide-shouldered and 
muscular, tall, lanky and breezy, and they almost 
speak our language ! Brought up, as we were, on 
vast continents, their point of view about life is 
broad-gauged. Like us, they find many things in 
England small, cramped and insular. But they have 
learned, as you will learn, that size isn't everything, 
and that even islands, if inhabited by men and 
women of red blood, cut ice too. The Anzacs from 
" down under," the Canucks from our side of the 
pond, and the big fellows from South Africa will all 
go home with very different ideas about the Old 
Country ; and, judging by the skylarking that is 
going on, I guess a good many of them will take 
back English wives, too. 

The significant fact about Colonial participation 
in the war is the evidence it supplies that the 
Colonies believe in the justice of the English cause. 
The Australians and New Zealanders would not 
have come 14,000 miles to fight if they didn't think 
the English case was absolutely on the square. The 
lads of Dutch extraction who drove the Germans out 
of South- West Africa would not have left the veldt 
and crossed 10,000 miles of sea to fight in Europe, as 



76 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

they are doing, if they weren't dead sure that 
England deserved their help. The Canadians would 
not have abandoned their farms and businesses to 
hurry across the Atlantic and bleed for the Mother- 
land if they were not convinced that England was 
right. By the enthusiasm with which the British 
clans have gathered from the four quarters of the 
Empire, they have exposed the German propaganda 
claim that British rule is " tyrannical," that 
British foreign policy is " deceitful and aggressive," 
and that England went to war for gain and out of 
greed. The Colonials rushed to arms because the 
complete independence which they enjoy within the 
British Empire was just as much threatened by 
Germany as the liberties of England, Scotland, 
Wales and Ireland. 

Australia's population is smaller than that of New 
York City, yet 426,000 Australian soldiers have been 
enlisted, every one of them volunteers. Up to 
August 1, 1918, 321,000 of them had been embarked 
for various Allied fields of battle. That is more men 
than the whole British Empire sent to the South 
African war eighteen years ago ! Considerably over 
8 per cent, of Australia's population has " joined 
up." Already 52,385 Australians have been killed 
in action ; 135,245 have been wounded, and only 
3,353 have surrendered to the enemy, most of these 
because wounds had put them out of action. The 
total war expenditure of Australia exceeds a billion 
dollars— the exact total is $1,100,000,000. In 1918 



IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 77 

her war bill will amount to $500,000,000. Alone and 
single-handed the 5,000,000 inhabitants of Australia 
have organised and paid for the equipment, trans- 
port and upkeep of their great army. For the past 
two years Australia has maintained five divisions in 
France, the equivalent of one cavalry division in 
Egypt and Palestine, and kept all battalions to 
strength by constant reinforcements from voluntary 
enlistment. The personnel of the Royal Australian 
Navy exceeds 9,000 officers and men. This is the 
young Fleet which distinguished itself in the first 
three months of the war by hunting down and 
destroying the famous raider, Emden. The 
Australians have their own independent army 
organisation — hospitals, medical services, aviation 
branch, training camps, and everything. Their Corps 
in France, commanded by a self-made Melbourne 
business-man (General Sir John Monash), greatly 
distinguished itself in this summer's victorious 
Allied fighting in France. The Australians lived up 
splendidly to the brilliant record made by their 
earliest comrades, the heroes of the Allies' ill-starred 
venture at Gallipoli in 1915. The bravery of the 
Australian soldier is now proverbial. There are 
hardly any troops that the Germans so hate to go 
up against as the boys from the bush country. 
Somebody told me that the Yanks on the Western 
front underwent their baptism of fire alongside 
Australian troops. Our army could have had no 
better model. Australia, having sent her boys to 



78 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

the war, intends seeing that they are well taken 
care of when they come back. She purposes 
repatriating all of them and re-establishing them in 
civil life at an estimated cost of $150,000,000. 

Canada's record is no less glorious than that of 
Australia. She has enlisted 552,000 men, and sent 
383,500 overseas. I guess that total includes the 
thousands of Yanks who enlisted in the Canadian 
Army before we came into the war. The Canadians 
have fought in many of the bloodiest engagements in 
which the British Army has taken part in France 
and Flanders. Up to the middle of this year 
Canadian casualites amounted to 159,084, including 
43,279 killed in action, or died of wounds or disease. 
Thirty Canadians have won the Victoria Cross. 
Over 200 Canadian officers have been on duty in 
the United States as instructors. Like the Austra- 
lians, the Canadians maintain a completely 
independent military organisation. They have a 
wonderful Air Service of their own, including 
champions like Lieut.-Colonel Bishop, V.C. (72 Hun 
machines brought to earth), and during the past 
3|- years have sent into aviation a total of 14,000 
men. Canada is becoming an important factor in 
shipbuilding. Her output of munitions is of the 
greatest importance. She has produced nearly a 
billion dollars' worth altogether. Of some particular 
varieties of shells Canadian munition works turned 
out during 1917 and 1918 40 per cent, of the entire 
needs of the British Army. 



IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 79 

Canada has come across with her money as well 
as with her men and munitions. Her war bill will 
total $1,200,000,000 by the end of this year. 
The Dominion Treasury has loaned to the Mother 
Country the sum of $460,000,000 to assist in paying 
for munitions, and Canadian banks have loaned 
still another $100,000,000 for the same purpose. 
These are colossal achievements for a country whose 
population in 1911 (7,206,643) was not as large as 
Pennsylvania's (7,665,111). We of the United 
States are proud of our great neighbour on the 
North. Her sons and daughters live on the same 
sort of soil that we inhabit and breathe the same 
invigorating air. The coasts of their vast conti- 
nent are washed by the identical waters that lash 
the shores of the United States. The Canadians 
have added fresh lustre to the North American 
name. Yanks in England are often mistaken for 
Canadians, and Canadians for Americans. Both of 
us chew gum, play baseball, and have other tastes in 
common. The Britishers say that we do the same 
things to the English language too. Well, I don't 
know how the Canucks feel about it ; but if I 
were an American soldier I would be mighty glad 
if anybody thought I belonged to the army that 
made itself immortal at Vimy Ridge in 1917, and 
this year, in the great battle of Amiens, accom- 
plished even greater deeds. Read how the proud 
Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Corps, Lieu- 
tenant-General Sir Arthur Currie — a 43-year-old 



80 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

giant — summarised the work of his men in front of 
Amiens : — 

" On August 8 the Canadian Corps, to which 
was attached the 3rd Cavalry Division, the 
4th Tank Brigade, the 5th Squadron R.A.F., 
attacked on a front of 7,500 yards. After a 
penetration of 22,000 yards the line to-night 
rests on a 10,000-yard frontage. Sixteen 
German divisions have been identified, of which 
four have been completely routed. Nearly 150 
guns have been captured, while over 1,000 
machine-guns have fallen into our hands. Ten 
thousand prisoners have passed through our 
cages and casualty clearing stations, a number 
greatly in excess of our total casualties. Twenty- 
five towns and villages have been rescued from 
the clutch of the invaders, the Paris-Amiens 
railway has been freed from interference, and 
the danger of dividing the French and British 
Army has been dissipated." 

That's glory enough, to my way of thinking, to 
last Toronto and Winnipeg, Alberta and Saskatch- 
ewan, Vancouver and Ottawa, till the crack of doom. 

I wish I had the space tojlontinue the story, in 
detail, of what the other British clans have done 
in the hour of the Motherland's peril. But it would 
only be a repetition on a proportionate scale of what 
Australia and Canada are doing. New Zealand, with 
a population of just over a million, has sent about 
100,000 troops, white and coloured, to Freedom's 




pq 






> o 
w < 

o 




[American Army official photograph. 

"The Stuff to Give 'Em" 
American gunners at Chateau Thierry 



IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 81 

battlefields. Together with the Australians, the 
New Zealanders formed the famous " Anzac " Corps 
at Gallipoli. They are mighty warriors, of the grim 
type of American plainsmen, and are feared and 
deeply respected on the German front. Many 
Maori tribesmen — the same fighting stuff as our 
black men — are in the N.Z. bunch. 

South Africa at the outbreak of the war gave the 
Germans one of their cruellest disappointments by 
raising a volunteer army of 58,000 under the 
leadership of General Louis Botha — the Dutch- 
man who less than fifteen years previous was 
in arms against England on the same soil. 
Botha's army conquered the Kaiser's finest over- 
sea colony, German South- West Africa, an area 
of 322,500 square miles. Since then the South 
African army under another old Boer War enemy 
of England, General Smuts, has conquered German 
East Africa. In addition to kiboshing the Kaiser in 
Africa, the South Africans have sent nearly 10,000 
men to Europe, including some of the finest fighting 
material which the British Empire affords. Little 
Newfoundland, the smallest British colony, has 
done her full bit, too, and contributed far more in 
men and money than might have been expected 
from a country of only 250,000 inhabitants. From 
wherever the Union Jack flies, Britannia's sons have 
rallied to fight and die for her — from Malta, Fiji, 
Jamaica, Ceylon, Shanghai, the Bahamas, Barba- 
dos, British Guiana, Dominica, Trinidad, Bermuda. 

G 



82 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

India, that priceless jewel in the British Crown, 
will never be forgiven in Berlin. Germany's fondest 
hopes of all were pinned on " revolution " in the vast 
Empire of the Maharajahs. Incipient sedition has 
long been smouldering in isolated parts of India, and 
the Kaiser implicitly believed that the embers of 
unrest would speedily burst forth into a furious blaze 
among the 320,000,000 people of England's greatest 
dependency. He and his German spies fanned those 
embers for years. What happened ? In September, 
1914, a stately armada of transports entered Mar- 
seilles harbour, bearing 70,000 troops from India, 
under Indian officers, to fight for England and 
France against Germany ! Since then Indians have 
been in action with unfailing gallantry in almost 
every theatre of war in which England is fighting — 
in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, in Macedonia, on the 
Suez Canal and in East Africa. The great native 
Princes of India, who are nominally the subjects 
of the King of England in his capacity as Emperor 
of India, have given freely of their vast fortunes 
for the British cause. By every means in their 
power they have urged their own native subjects 
to go forth in the Empire's cause. The Aga Khan, 
the head of the Mahomedans, called on all of the 
faithful to fight for England, and he himself 
volunteered to serve as a private in any Indian 
infantry regiment. The Grand Old Man of India, 
Lieutenant-General Sir Pertab Singh, has com- 
manded Indian troops in France. 



IRELAND AND THE COLONIES 83 

So runs the Empire's story of glory since 1914. 
Historians will compile volumes about it some day. 
Poets will be inspired to sing of it in verse. All that 
concerns us to-day is to know that the British 
Empire has made good with a big G. The demo- 
cratic system, under which these little islands govern 
five hundred million people of all colours, creeds and 
conditions, was tried and not found wanting. 



G 2 



CHAPTER VII 

HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 

The British Empire is a free country. None 
freer exists anywhere on God's footstool. The 
Britishers boast that there is more freedom under 
their Union Jack than there is under our Stars and 
Stripes. We won't argue that point with them. I 
merely allude to it to make you understand that 
although they have a King and a House of Lords, 
and Princes and Dukes and titles, and all that sort 
of thing, the Britishers look upon themselves as 
being in all respects as democratic and as free a 
nation as the United States. I have already de- 
scribed Great Britain to you as a country with a 
President who is called a King. I cannot think of 
any better or truer way of explaining the British 
Monarchy. There is one big difference. That is, 
that the Britishers' Royal Chief Magistrate has not 
got nearly as much power as our American Presidents 
have. I suppose that is why the Britishers think 
that their little old country is freer than ours. At 
any rate, I guess a good many of you have been 

8+ 



HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 85 

agreeably surprised to find how free the British 
atmosphere really is. Have you found the air 
around your Rest Camps a bit different from the air 
you breathed in New England, the Mississippi 
Valley, the South- West, or along the Pacific Coast ? 
Except for the unfamiliar kind of English youVe 
heard — and the funny stunts of the British climate 
— would you ever realise that you were in England 
instead of back home in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, 
Virginia, Indiana, Minnesota, or California ? You 
haven't seen any signs up reading " The King 
forbids " this, that or the other thing, have you ? 
You haven't seen the Tommies bowing and scraping 
in front of any Royal image, or speaking in awe- 
struck whispers about " His Majesty," have you ? 
On your life, you have not. That's only done in 
Germany. It won't be done very much by the 
time you get there. Probably you've noticed that 
the British Army and Navy are called " His 
Majesty's Forces." The Government, too, is known 
as " His Majesty's Government." But, like the 
Monarchy itself, these things are only form. The 
Britisher loves form. In fact, he worships it. He 
knows just as well as you and I know that the Army 
and Navy are not " His Majesty's " forces really. 
They are the armed forces of the British Nation — 
to-day they are the nation itself. But the Army 
and Navy have been termed " His Majesty's 
Forces " for a thousand years or more, and as the 
Britishers are very strong for the musty things of 



86 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

life, they cling to that description of their military 
and naval establishments. It was good enough for 
their great-great-grandfathers and it's good enough 
for them. 

A lot of you by this time have memorised the first 
verse of the British National Anthem : 

" God save our gracious King, 
Long live our noble King, 
God save the King. 
Send him victorious, 
Happy and glorious, 
Long to reign over us, 
God save the King ! " 

Now that's what the Britishers sing, and they 
always stand up when they sing it. Soldiers and 
sailors in uniform come stiffly to the salute when the 
anthem is played or sung. Don't get the idea that 
they show these signs of respect in any spirit of 
cringing servility to a crowned monarch. The King 
of England doesn't expect that kind of respect from 
his subjects — who are called subjects, by the way, 
again out of sheer form. They are in fact citizens, 
just like you and me. If they were really his " sub- 
jects," he would have power of life and death over 
them. He does not possess any such power. A 
Britisher can only be put to death or deprived of his 
liberty after a fair trial. No, " God save the King " 
actually means " God save Britain." God is asked 
to send the King " victorious," but what the 
Britisher means when he sings that prayer is that 



HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 87 

Britain be " sent victorious." He prays that the 
King may be kept " happy and glorious " and 
" long to reign over us " because the King is his 
accepted, even if not elected, Sovereign. They 
venerate the monarchal tradition which he repre- 
sents. They want him " saved " not because 
he happens to be named Albert Edward or 
George or something else, but because he is 
the physical, personal embodiment of their rights 
and liberties under the crown which the reigning 
King wears by their consent and with their 
approval. 

You will ask me where the King " comes in," if 
he has no such power as our President wields. 
Well, there must be a head or a figurehead to every 
great concern, and a nation is the greatest of all 
concerns. The King heads the British concern. 
The nearest thing the Britishers have to our 
President, as the actual head of their national 
administration, is the Prime Minister. Govern- 
ment in Great Britain is party government as it is in 
the United States. The political party that gets 
the most votes at a " General Election " — which is 
held about every five years for the purpose of 
electing members to the House of Commons (the 
British equivalent of our House of Representatives) 
■ — has the right to select one of its own members to 
be Prime Minister. If the Liberal Party gets a 
majority in the House of Commons, the Prime 
Minister will be a Liberal If the Conservative 



88 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Party obtains the majority, a Conservative is 
appointed Prime Minister. The Labour Party is 
now very strong in Great Britain, and some day, 
perhaps, it will have a majority in the House of 
Commons. Then a Labour leader will be called to 
the Prime Ministership. Whoever becomes Prime 
Minister selects the members of his own administra- 
tion, just as the newly-elected President of the 
United States picks out his own Cabinet. The 
King nominally asks So-and-So to be Prime Minister 
and to compose a Government. But that is only a 
bluff. It is " form " again. The political party 
that the voters of the country have placed in 
power in Parliament (the House of Commons) 
decides who shall be Prime Minister, and the 
King sends for him and " appoints " him. Do 
you get that ? The Prime Minister of Great 
Britain, in other words, is every bit as much " the 
people's choice " as is the President of the United 
States. 

But the Prime Minister does not become the ruler 
of the country. Parliament is the ruler. The 
" P. M." holds office only by the will and consent of 
Parliament. They vote him in and they can vote 
him out. If he brings in a Bill for the passage of 
some new law, and the House of Commons rejects 
it — in other words, turns the Prime Minister down — 
he and his Government have to appeal to the 
country. A new election is necessary. If the 
country supports him and sends back to Parliament 



HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 89 

a House of Commons with a majority in favour of 
the Prime Minister, he retains office. Otherwise, 
he is out of a job, and the leader of the party to 
which the country has given a majority succeeds 
him as head of the Government. 

There may be a newly-elected Parliament in 
England before 1918 is over, as there is a good deal 
of talk at the moment of a General Election. Then, 
once again, according to tradition, the King will 
formally " open " Parliament. He will ride from 
Buckingham Palace to the House of Lords and there 
deliver a so-called " Speech from the Throne." It 
will use old-fashioned expressions like " My Govern- 
ment," " My Army," " My Navy," " My People," 
and other similar phrases. Nobody in Britain will 
get angry when he reads them next day in the 
newspaper. The King will use those expressions 
because they are part and parcel of the Royal 
System which the Britishers tolerate and venerate. 
That's all. The King's venerable language will not 
alter the fact that through their Parliament the 
British people rule. 

You will notice that I said that the King opens 
Parliament in the House of Lords. He does not go 
to the House of Commons, where the elected repre- 
sentatives of the people sit and rule. The House of 
Lords prior to 1911 had a great deal more power 
than it now possesses. It is made up mostly of men 
who sit there by right of heredity — -because they 
are the sons of their fathers. When the Duke of 



90 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Norfolk or the Duke of Sutherland or the Duke of 
Portland dies, his eldest son becomes the Duke of 
that name and takes his late father's place in the 
House of Lords, or Upper House, as it is some- 
times called. So with the eldest sons (or other 
heirs) of Marquises, Earls, Viscounts, and plain 
Lords. The " Parliament Act of 1911 " made 
certain changes in the rights and privileges of the 
House of Lords. Their effect was to leave the 
elected House of Commons practically the boss of 
the show. The House of Lords is now more or 
less ornamental as far as the real government of 
Great Britain is concerned. 

Having tried, as simply as I could, to tell you what 
the British governing system is, I'll give you a little 
of the personal side of it. The Britishers couldn't 
have done the big things they have put across 
during the past four years if they didn't have Big 
Men at the helm. First of all, their King has 
proved himself to be a brick. Without thrusting 
himself into the spot-light — that would have been 
neither kingly, according to British tradition, nor 
British at all, because it would not have been 
" reserve " — George V., like the humblest of his 
people, has played the game. He sent his eldest 
son, the Prince of Wales, to the front as a soldier, 
and the lad, who is 24, has proved himself to be an 
intelligent, efficient young officer, popular with the 
rank and file and in every respect a fine type of the 
Briton of his age and class. The King's second and 



HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 91 

third sons, Prince Albert and Prince Henry, who are 
aged 23 and 18 respectively, followed their father's 
footsteps and entered the Navy, though Prince 
Albert is now in aviation. What King George has 
done in the war has been to set his people a high 
example of patriotism and hard work. He (and 
the Queen too) has been indefatigable in every sort 
of activity designed to fire the enthusiasm of the 
people in getting on with and winning the war. 
The King visits the wounded in hospital, mingles 
with the workers in the munition factories, goes to 
the Front in France periodically to sojourn among 
the soldiers in the field, inspects the Grand Fleet 
from time to time — with the eye of an expert sailor, 
for that is the King's profession — and in every way 
associates himself with the stirring life and times of 
the nation at this great hour. I don't suppose there 
is a man in all England who works harder at his job 
than the King does. He has to see an enormous 
number of important people, both British and 
foreign. He has to sign hundreds of documents 
daily. His advice, under the British Constitution, 
has to be sought and secured on countless occasions. 
He himself instituted the custom of conferring 
honours, medals, decorations and titles for war 
service publicly, instead of privately within the 
walls of Buckingham Palace. He has tried in 
every way to be, and succeeded in being, a 
People's King. 

He likes Americans — enjoys our breezy way of 



92 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

doing and saying things. Here's a story the King 
himself tells. Some time ago he had an American 
General at lunch. Conversation turned on the sub- 
ject of what the world would be like after the war. 
" How do you think things will be ? " the King- 
asked our General. " Well, I don't know," replied 
the American, " but I'm dead sure of one thing — 
there'll be a lot of German talked in Hell ! " The 
King loved that. He liked it because it was a free 
and easy come-back. He doesn't care much for 
side, either in himself or in others. , He visited an 
American battleship in Irish waters last Summer 
and shovelled coal into the furnace. When the 
stokers marvelled at his skill, the King said : " Oh, 
that used to be one of my jobs when I was in the 
Navy." And, of course, King George has a strong 
claim on our affections because he's a baseball 
fan. 

The Prime Minister of England is David Lloyd 
George. He's a Welshman and the kind of man we 
honour in America, because he is self-made. He 
was a poor boy, with none of the advantages of 
wealth, birth, or position. He had nerve, ability, 
courage and a silver tongue, and those qualities 
made him Prime Minister in December, 1916. 
Lloyd George was a live wire in British politics long- 
before that. In 1900, when I first came to this 
country, he was only a private Member of Parlia- 
ment, but had already won a reputation for 
pugnacity. Pie was Chancellor of the Exchequer 



HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 93 

(Secretary of the Treasury) when war broke out, 
and in that capacity rendered important service in 
mobilising the finances of Great Britain. Germany 
hated him cordially for several years before 1914, 
because when the Kaiser got gay in Morocco in 1911 
and tried to bully France, it was a speech by Lloyd 
George that brought Germany to her senses and 
prevented war. In those critical hours in August, 
1914, when there were divisions in the British 
Cabinet on the question of intervention in the war, 
Lloyd George was one of the men who advocated 
from the very first that Britain should go in. A 
man of pacific tendencies, a Democrat who believed 
in peace, Lloyd George wanted only peace with 
honour. He knew that Britain could not have 
that kind of peace if she stayed out. In 1915, 
when Britain came to the conclusion that a special 
Ministry of Munitions had to be created for the 
production of guns and shells on a gigantic scale, 
Lloyd George was put in charge of it. It was the 
right place for a man of his driving power and 
organising skill, and he will have a great niche in the 
history of the war for what he accomplished as 
. Munitions Minister. Lloyd George is precisely the 
sort of public man who would be popular in the 
United States. If he had been born there, I think it 
would be a hard job to keep him out of the White 
House, for he is a natural leader of wonderful 
magnetism. There is a good deal of the Teddy 
Roosevelt about him. One of Lloyd George's 



94 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

heroes is Abraham Lincoln, and his hobby is 
golf. 

I wish I had the space to tell in detail of a lot of 
the other Big Men of Britain. Lord Kitchener, who 
organised the great Volunteer Army of 1914-15, 
accomplished a work that will have high place in 
the annals of war. Fortunately, his task was, for the 
most part, already accomplished when he was 
drowned in a British man-of-war while on his way to 
Russia in 1916. Lord French, who commanded the 
old British Army in France for the first year and 
a half of the war, and is now Viceroy of Ireland, 
enhanced a military reputation which he won 
in South Africa in 1899-1900-1901. Sir Douglas 
Haig, the present British Commander-in-Chief 
in France, is a fine specimen of the modern British 
soldier and, as he has only recently proved, a 
strategist of no mean calibre. Marshal Foch, 
our great French Generalissimo, thinks very highly 
of Haig. 

In Admiral Beatty the British Navy has a Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the bulldog temperament that 
the hour calls for. When he got his teeth into the 
German Fleet at Jutland in May, 1916, he never 
let go until the Germans, having had their fill of 
the fray, scampered back to their ports, where 
they've been laid up for repairs ever since. 
Some people said Beatty was too eager on 
that occasion — took too many risks. Well, he 
fought in accordance with the British Navy's 



HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 95 

tradition, which is to pound Hell out of the 
enemy whenever the chance is given, and to keep 
on pounding as long as you can. Admiral Beatty 
is only 47 years old. He is married to a charm- 
ing American lady, the daughter of the late 
Marshall Field, of Chicago. 

The naval service is rightly a service in which 
young blood predominates. In Sir Eric Geddes, 
First Lord of the Admiralty — or what we would call 
Secretary of the Navy — Britain has another man 
after our own heart, for he is not only youthful (42), 
but entirely self-made. He began life as a rail- 
way porter, and learned the railway business — 
which is his occupation in civil life — in our 
Southern States, where he spent several years 
lumbering and working for the B. & O. Geddes 
visited the U.S.A. this autumn to get acquainted 
with Secretary Daniels and our home Naval 
establishment. 

Winston Churchill, who is now responsible for the 
colossal work of the Ministry of Munitions, is half- 
American, his mother having been a Miss Jennie 
Jerome, of New York. He, too, enjoys the advan- 
tage of youthful energy, being just 44. There is also 
a North American touch about Bonar Law, who is 
Lloyd George's right-hand man in the conduct of 
the war, and is now in charge of Treasury and 
financial matters as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
Law was born in Canada — in New Brunswick. 
Lord Beaverbrook, the hustling young British 



96 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Minister of Information (aged 39), who has 
organized hospitality in Britain for the American 
forces on so splendid a scale, is also a Canadian 
and was born in the same town as Bonar Law. 
That extraordinarily virile Englishman, Viscount 
Northcliffe, who conducts British propaganda in 
Enemy Countries and is Germany's best-hated 
Britisher, is well known in the U.S.A., which he 
admires intensely and knows more intimately, 
probably, than any living Britisher. Lord 
Northcliffe, whose newspapers rendered historic 
service in firing his country and its Governments 
with Get-On-with-the-War "pep," was Britain's 
Special Commissioner to the United States in 1917. 
Another prominent member of Lloyd George's 
Administration is Sir Albert Stanley, President of 
the Board of Trade (the Government's business 
department, which controls railways, mines, ship- 
ping and all industrial affairs). He, too, may be 
described as " part Yank," as his entire business 
training, in electric transportation affairs, was 
gained in the U.S.A. He keeps up the youthful 
tradition of Britain's War Government, for he is 
only 43. So does the brilliant young Attorney- 
General, Sir Frederick E. Smith, who toured the 
United States in 1918. Smith is 46. 

No list of the Big Men of the war era 
would be complete without the name of Lord 
Reading, British Ambassador to the United States. 
Earl Reading, to give him his full title, is 



HOW THE BRITISHERS ARE GOVERNED 97 

undoubtedly one of the most remarkable English- 
men alive. He is a lawyer by profession, and when 
he was in private life and practised under his own 
name of Rufus Isaacs, he was the most skilful man 
at the Bar — the kind that litigants always preferred 
to have for them rather than against them. Early 
in the war he was Attorney-General and then be- 
came Lord Chief Justice, which is the blue ribbon 
of the legal profession in this country. The 
Government sent Lord Reading to the United 
States on several important war missions, prin- 
cipally in connection with finance, and he so en- 
deared himself to the American people that he was 
the logical man for the Ambassadorship when it 
became vacant in 1918. No man has done more 
during the war to enable Britishers and Americans 
to get together. 

The working classes of Great Britain have to-day 
the largest share in the Government that Labour in 
any country ever possessed. George N. Barnes (a 
mechanic by trade) is a member of the War Cabinet. 
George H. Roberts, a printer, is Minister of Labour. 
J. R. Clynes, a cotton operative, is Food Minister. 
John Hodge, who began life as an iron puddler, is 
Minister of Pensions. William Brace, a coal 
miner, is Under-Secretary for Home Affairs and 
one of the most eloquent orators in England 
besides. 

And, before I forget it, the Britishers are hence- 
forth to be governed, in part, by their women. Six 

H 



98 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

millions of them — provided they're willing to 'fess up 
that they're 30 years old — will vote in future. 
Their great work in the war won for the women the 
right to a hand in the steering of the British ship of 
State t 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BULLDOG BREED 

There is one thing about the Britisher that the 
Germans cannot understand. He never knows when 
he is licked. That is why men of the British race 
have come to be known as "the bulldog breed." 
They had that reputation long before this war, but 
have clinched their title to it a thousandfold during 
the past four years. Indeed, they would have 
deserved it on their record of the Spring and 
Summer of 1918 alone. Who would have dared to 
imagine that the British Army that was battered 
back through the Somme valley in March and April 
would so fully recover its punch by September 
that it would be smashing the " Hindenburg Line " 
at will ? Tommy Atkins has done what Jim 
Jeffries couldn't do. He " came back." One of 
Napoleon's marshals said that the right kind of an 
army was the army that is most dangerous when the 
enemy thinks it is broken. That is precisely what 
the British Army made of itself, after passing 

99 H 2 



100 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

through the bitter waters of defeat for four weary, 
disheartening years. It's the bulldog way. 

We Yanks have for the most part formed our ideas 
of the Britisher from the American stage English- 
man. I used to think that all Britishers were 
Cissy-like Lords with monocles, checked trousers, 
chesty manners, and a haw-haw attitude toward 
their humbler fellow- creatures such as mere 
Americans. I imagine that a good many of you 
may have been under the impression that nobody 
counts in the British Army unless he is of blue 
blood, with Dukes and Duchesses for his relations, 
and a wad of money in the bank. Also, I suppose, 
you have pictured to yourselves a British Army 
bossed and run by high and mighty Englishmen 
lording it over their menial subordinates. Well, 
I can clear your minds up about that. I have 
been at the British front twice during the war. 
My lasting impression on both occasions was of the 
good-fellowship existing between officers and men. 
There are, of course, " class distinctions " in Britain 
— just as there are in the United States, though we 
don't like to admit it. But these distinctions are 
levelled on the battlefield. There a man is just a 
man. What counts is what he is, not what his 
father is or his grandfather was. He has the 
same chance to make good that a Duke's son 
has. You'll know the spirit I'm trying to describe 
when I tell you that a Captain (Pollock of the 
East Yorks, son of a Knight who is a rich lawyer) 



THE BULLDOG BREED 101 

was killed the other day while saving his soldier 
servant. 

Let me give you some more samples of what I 
mean. When the war broke out 400,000 coal miners 
volunteered from England, Scotland and Wales. 
One of them was a man named Godfrey Jones, who 
began life as a pit-boy at the Ebbw Vale colliery 
in Wales. Joining as a private in Sepember, 
1914, Jones was speedily promoted corporal, then 
sergeant-major, and finally won his lieutenancy. On 
the Salonica front (in Greece) he conducted himself 
with such gallantry that he was promoted captain, 
won the Distinguished Service Order, and was later 
given the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Now the miner 
of 1914 has been recommended for a Brigadier- 
Generalship ! Jones is only 36 years old. 

Take the case of John Ward. Ward by trade is 
what they call in England a navvy — about the most 
humble class of working-man, the kind who digs 
sewers and that sort of thing. He was a Labour 
representative in Parliament when the war began. 
He went out among his fellow-navvies, raised five 
battalions of volunteers, and became their Colonel. 
His lads were in a torpedoed transport, on their way 
to one of Britain's far-off battlefields, and faced 
danger and imminent drowning for hours before 
relief came up. Ward's navvy-warriors spent their 
time singing " Rule, Britannia " and " Are we 
Downhearted ? NO!" 

In August, 1914, a young man named James W. 



102 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

Watkins, son of a station-master, was a ticket-seller 
on the Midland Railway. Having meantime won 
the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service 
Order, Watkins is to-day a Lieutenant- Colonel in 
the Lancashire Fusiliers — one of the characteristic- 
ally democratic romances of the war. 

An equally remarkable career is that of J. P. Pitts, 
of the King's Liverpool Regiment. A few years ago 
he was a band-boy in the Bedfordshire Regiment, of 
humble origin, without pull of any kind, with 
nothing in his favour except the bulldog spirit. 
Pitts, who was at Mons, won the Military Cross, 
and is to-day, at 25, a Lieutenant- Colonel. 

Major Charles Clark, of the Royal Field Artillery, 
who was killed in action in April, 1918, was a farm- 
hand before the war. Four cotton-mill lads who 
left work in 1914 and 1915 to join the Army have 
won commissions in the field. An able seaman 
named Robert William Fox, of the Roj^al Naval 
Division, has become a Second Lieutenant. There 
have, of course, been thousands of cases of 
men of the humblest origin who have been 
given commissions after serving in the ranks. 
Lads who were office-boys in 1914 are Lieutenants 
now. 

One of the most amazing proofs of the democratic 
atmosphere of the Army is Major-General John 
Monash, the Commander of the superb Australian 
Army Corps in France. He is a typical illustration 
of the fact that neither birth, creed, nor position in 



THE BULLDOG BREED 103 

life cuts any ice whatever as far as British military 
career is concerned. When the war broke out, 
Monash, who is a Jew, was a civil engineer in 
Melbourne. To-day he is Commander-in-Chief of 
one of the finest armies the world has ever seen. 
Perhaps I might mention in passing that Lord 
Reading, British Ambassador at Washington, is 
also a Jew and Lord Chief Justice of England 
besides. Jews are often members of the British 
Cabinet. 

The Royal Air Force of Britain — the great 
" R.A.F.," which is doing as much to win the war, I 
suppose, as any other single branch — overflows with 
examples of young fellows who have come to the top 
from humble origins. The British air champion, 
when he was killed in an accident this Summer, was 
James Byford McCudden, a youngster of 23. Before 
the war McCudden was an air-mechanic. He became 
a pilot — the most expert that the Army produced — 
and when he met his fate he was a Major, with a 
record of 54 Huns brought down. One of his last 
feats was to lay low the German air crack, Flight 
Lieutenant Voss. 

No less famous than McCudden was Captain 
Albert Ball, a Nottingham boy who was 16 years old 
when war broke out and barely 20 when he was 
killed in action. He had brought down 42 Germans 
in air fights. The Captain's brother, also a flying- 
man of rare courage and skill, is a prisoner in 
Germany. 



104 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

I have given you a few examples, at random from 
among many, of how the so-called common people 
of Britain have done their bit and won through to 
high rank on merit. Don't think that it is only the 
lower and middle classes of Britishers who have 
achieved Death and Glory. I want particularly to 
rid your mind of such a notion, for it is one of the 
lies that Germany has spread abroad with persistent 
malevolence. No class of Britisher has done more 
nobly in the war than the highest class of British 
society. The first man to win the Victoria Cross was 
Captain Francis Grenfell, of the 9th Lancers — a 
scion of one of England's most aristocratic houses. 
Grenfell was one of the " Old Contemptibles," the 
little British Army that held up the German plunge 
through Belgium in the first three weeks of the war. 
His V.C. was granted for helping to save the guns 
of a Royal Field Artillery battery. Afterwards 
Grenfell and his brother were killed in action. 

Ten Peers — heads of great noble families — have 
fallen fighting, including four Earls and six Barons, 
all members of the House of Lords. In addition to 
Peers who have lost their lives on the field of battle, 
sixty heirs to peerages have made the Great Sacri- 
fice. Through their deaths twelve peerages have 
become extinct, as there were no heirs to the titles 
they held. Thus came to an end, for instance, the 
Marquisate of Lincolnshire, the Earldom of St. 
Aldwyn, and the Viscounty of Buxton. 

Many of the foremost families of the country have 



THE BULLDOG BREED 105 

lost sons. Mr. Asquith, while Prime Minister, had to 
mourn the death of his heir, Raymond Asquith, a 
lawyer of talent and fine promise. Mr. Bonar Law, 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, has lost one son killed, 
another is a prisoner in the enemy's hands. The 
Hon. Neil Primrose, youngest son of the Earl of 
Rosebery, a former Prime Minister, fell in this year's 
fighting in Palestine alongside another scion of the 
aristocracy, Major Evelyn Rothschild, of the cele- 
brated banking family. Two grandsons of the 
famous Victorian statesman, William E. Gladstone, 
met heroes' deaths. The two elder sons of Lord 
Rothermere have fallen. The Earl of Denbigh 
has lost two sons, one at sea and one in France. 
Any number of British families have lost two 
members. Many have given three, and there are 
several cases of four boys belonging to the same 
family who have " gone West." All were sacrificed 
in the spirit in which the Widow Bixby of Massa- 
chusetts gave her five sons for the Union in our 
Civil War — the mother to whom our sainted 
Lincoln wrote that famous and beautiful letter, 
acclaiming " the solemn pride that must be yours 
to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of 
freedom." 

No reference to the bulldog breed can be complete 
without a passing tribute to the mothers, wives, 
daughters, sisters and sweethearts of Britain. How 
they face, dry-eyed, year after year, the losses of 
their men is one of the marvels of Britain's great era. 



106 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

I suppose it is due to that " reserve " and poise on 
which the British race so prides itself. Whatever it 
is that enables British women to stand the strain of 
war as they do, it is glorious. They are setting our 
mothers and wives, our sisters and sweethearts, a 
great and inspiring example. 

How can I begin to tell in deserving terms of the 
countless acts of bravery which the boys and men 
of the bulldog breed have performed ? The highest 
British distinction for gallantry before the foe is the 
Victoria Cross — " For Valour." It was founded by 
and named after Queen Victoria in 1856. It is a 
Maltese Cross of metal made from Russian cannon 
taken during the Crimean War at Sebastopol. When 
awarded to soldiers, the V.C. has a crimson ribbon ; 
when given to sailors, it has a dark blue ribbon. In 
the four years up to October, 1918, nearly 500 
Victoria Crosses had been awarded. They do not 
even remotely begin, of course, to exhaust the deeds 
of unflinching courage that the men of the British 
Army and Navy have to their immortal credit. The 
thousands who received the Military Cross, the Dis- 
tinguished Service Order, or medals of various 
grades, were just as heroic, just as ready to face 
danger and death, as the gallant 500 who won the 
Victoria Cross. 

The Victoria Cross is a thoroughly democratic 
institution. The lowest man in the ranks or the ship 
can aspire to it. An Irish hod-carrier has just as 
much chance to win it as an English Duke's son. 



THE BULLDOG BREED 107 

I've been skimming over the V.C. roll of honour, and 
my eye catches names like Boyle, Hogan, McFad- 
zean, O'Sullivan, O'Meara, and O'Leary. Several 
Jews have been awarded the prized badge of British 
courage. Even the fact that a man has " done time " 
does not bar him from a V.C, if he deserves it. One 
of the finest V.C. deeds was accomplished by an ex- 
convict, who was serving in the trenches alongside 
his former prison guards. By far the largest number 
of men in the proud list are (or were— for many have 
been killed since they won the honour or were 
awarded it after death) privates. All branches — 
infantry, artillery, cavalry, tanks, aircraft, sub- 
marines, destroyers — are represented. Indians, 
Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders are 
among the heroes, for the bulldog breed seems 
to manifest itself regardless of calling, rank, origin 
or colour. 

Perhaps you would like to know exactly the kind 
of stuff that wins the Victoria Cross. Here are a 
few awards chosen indiscriminately : — 

Acton, Private Abraham, 2nd Batt. Border 
Regiment. For conspicuous bravery at Cuinchy 
' on December 21, 1914, at Rouges Bancs, in 
voluntarily going from his trench and rescuing 
a wounded man who had been lying exposed 
against the enemy's trenches for seventy-five 
hours, and on the same day again leaving his 
trench voluntarily, under heavy fire, to bring 
into cover another wounded man. He and 
Private James Smith, V.C, were under fire for 



108 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

sixty minutes whilst conveying the wounded 
men into safety. 

Boyle, Lieutenant- Commander Edward C, 
Royal Navy. For most conspicuous bravery, 
in command of submarine E 14, when he dived 
his vessel under the enemy's minefields and 
entered the Sea of Marmora on April 27, 1915. 
In spite of great navigational difficulties from 
strong currents, of the continual neighbourhood 
of hostile patrols, and of the hourly danger of 
attack from the enemy, he continued to operate 
in the narrow waters of the Straits, and 
succeeded in sinking two Turkish gunboats 
and one large military transport. 

Silton, Lance-Sergeant Ellis Welwood, late 
Canadian Infantry Batt. For most conspicuous 
bravery and devotion to duty. During the 
attack in enemy trenches Sergeant Silton's 
company was held up by machine-gun fire 
which inflicted many casualties. Having located 
the gun, he charged it single-handed, killing all 
the crew. A small enemy party advanced down 
the trench, but he succeeded in keeping these 
off till our men had gained the position. In 
carrying out this gallant act he was killed, but 
his conspicuous valour undoubtedly saved 
many lives and contributed largely to the 
success of the operation. 

Mariner, Private William, 2nd Batt. King's 
Royal Rifle Corps. During a violent thunder- 
storm on the night of May 22, 1915, he left his 
trench near Cambrin, and crept out through the 
German wire entanglements till he reached the 
emplacement of a German machine-gun which 



THE BULLDOG BREED 109 

had been damaging our parapets and hindering 
our working parties. After climbing on the top 
of the German parapet he threw a bomb in 
under the roof of the gun emplacement and 
heard some groaning and the enemy running 
away. After about a quarter of an hour he 
heard some of them coming back again, and 
climbed up on the other side of the emplace- 
ment and threw another bomb among them 
left-handed. He then lay still while the Ger- 
mans opened a heavy fire on the wire entangle- 
ments behind him, and it was only after about 
an hour that he was able to crawl back to his 
own trench. 

Warneford, Flight Sub-Lieutenant, late 
Royal Flying Corps. For destroying single- 
handed the first German Zeppelin brought to 
grief in the war. Afterwards, although forced 
to descend on enemy soil, he succeeded in 
flying back safely. (Since killed.) 

Maling, Temporary Lieutenant George Allan, 
M.B., Royal Army Medical Corps. For most 
conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty 
during the heavy fighting near Fauquissart on 
September 25, 1915. Lieutenant Maling worked 
incessantly with untiring energy from 6.15 a.m. 
on the 25th till 8 a.m. on the 26th, collecting 
and treating in the open under heavy shell fire 
more than 300 men. At about 11 a.m. on the 
25th he was flung down and temporarily 
stunned by the bursting of a large high- 
explosive shell, which wounded his only assistant 
and killed several of his patients. A second 
shell soon after covered him and his instru- 



110 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

ments with debris, but his high courage and 
zeal never failed him, and he continued his 
gallant work single-handed. 

Addison, Rev. W. R. F., Temporary Chap- 
lain to the Forces, 4th CL, Army Chaplains' 
Department. He carried a wounded man to the 
cover of a trench, and assisted several others to 
the same cover, after binding up their wounds 
under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire. 
In addition to these unaided efforts, by his 
splendid example and utter disregard of 
personal danger, he encouraged the stretcher- 
bearers to go forward under heavy fire and 
collect the wounded. 

Bingham, Comr. the Hon. Edward S. B. 
(Prisoner of War in Germany). For the ex- 
tremely gallant way in which he led his division 
in their attack, first on enemy destroyers and 
then on their battle-cruisers. He finally sighted 
the enemy battle-fleet, and, followed by the one 
remaining destroyer of his division (Nicator), 
with dauntless courage he closed to within 
3,000 yards of the enemy in order to attain a 
favourable position for firing his torpedoes. 
While making this attack Nestor and Nicator 
were under concentrated fire of the secondary 
batteries of the High Sea Fleet. Nestor was 
subsequently sunk. 

Laidlaw, Piper Daniel, 7th King's Own 
Scottish Borderers. For most conspicuous 
bravery prior to an assault on German trenches 
near Loos and Hill 70 on September 25, 1915. 
During the worst of the bombardment, when 
the attack was about to commence, Piper 



THE BULLDOG BREED 111 

Laidlaw, seeing that his company was some- 
what shaken from the effects of gas, with 
absolute coolness and disregard of danger 
mounted the parapet, marched up and down, 
and played his company out of the trench. 
The effect of his splendid example was imme- 
diate and the company dashed out to the 
assault. Piper Laidlaw continued playing his 
pipes till he was wounded. 

Frickleton, Lance-Corporal Samuel, New 
Zealand Infantry. For most conspicuous 
bravery and determination when with attack- 
ing troops, which came under heavy fire and 
were checked. Although slightly wounded, 
Corporal Frickleton dashed forward at the head 
of his section, pushed into our barrage, and 
personally destroyed with bombs an enemy 
machine-gun and crew which was causing 
heavy casualties. He then attacked a second 
gun, killing the whole of the crew of twelve. 
By the destruction of these two guns he un- 
doubtedly saved his own and other units from 
very severe casualties, and his magnificent 
courage and gallantry ensured the capture 
of the objective. During the consolidation 
of the position he received a second severe 
wound. He set throughout a great example 
of heroism. 

McFadzean, Private W. F., late Royal Irish 
Rifles. While in a concentration trench and 
opening a box of bombs for distribution prior 
to an attack, the box slipped down into the 
trench, which was crowded with men, and two 
of the safety pins fell out. Private McFadzean, 



112 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

instantly realising the danger to his comrades, 
with heroic courage threw himself on the top 
of the bombs. The bombs exploded, blowing 
him to pieces, but only one other man was 
injured. He well knew his danger, being him- 
self a bomber, but without a moment's hesita- 
tion he gave his life for his comrades 

Robinson, Lieutenant William Leefe, Wor- 
cester Regiment and Royal Flying Corps. For 
most conspicuous bravery. He attacked an 
enemy airship trying to bomb London under 
circumstances of great difficulty and danger, 
and sent it crashing to the ground as a naming 
wreck. He had been in the air for more than 
two hours, and had previously attacked another 
airship during his flight. 

Jackson, Private W., Australian Infantry. 
On the return from a successful raid several 
members of the raiding party were seriously 
wounded in "No Man's Land " by shell fire. 
Private Jackson got back safely, and, after 
handing over a prisoner whom he had brought 
in, immediately went out again under very 
heavy shell fire and assisted in bringing in a 
wounded man. He then went out again, and 
with a sergeant was bringing in another 
wounded man, when his arm was blown off by 
a shell and the sergeant was rendered un- 
conscious. 

For gallantry and devotion to duty in the 
second blocking operation in Ostend Harbour on 
May 9-10, when the old warship Vindictive was 



THE BULLDOG BREED 113 

sunk in the harbour, the following awards of the 
Victoria Cross were announced : — 

Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Heneage 
Drummond, R.N.V.R. Volunteered for rescue 
work in command of M.L. 254. Although 
severely wounded in three places, he remained 
on the bridge and navigated his vessel, seri- 
ously damaged by shell fire, alongside Vindic- 
tive and took off two officers and 38 men, some of 
whom were killed and many wounded while 
embarking. He backed his vessels out clear of 
the piers before sinking exhausted from his 
wounds. 

Lieut. -Commander Roland Bourke, D.S.O., 
R.N.V.R. After M.L. 254 had backed out of 
the harbour he, in command of M.L. 276, made 
a further search of Vindictive, but finding no 
one, withdrew. Hearing cries in the water he 
again entered the harbour, and after a pro- 
longed search found Lieut. Sir John Alleyne 
and two men, all badly wounded, clinging to 
an upended skiff and rescued them. All the 
time the motor-launch was under heavy fire at 
close range, being hit in 55 places. 

Lieut. Victor A. C. Crutchley, D.S.C., R.N. 
He was in Brilliant in the unsuccessful attempt 
to block Ostend on April 22-23 and at once 
volunteered for the second effort. He was 
1st Lieutenant in Vindictive, and when his 
commanding officer was killed and the second 
in command severely wounded, he took com- 
mand. He did not leave Vindictive until he 
had made a thorough search with an electric 

I 



114 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

torch for survivors under heavy fire. He took 
command of M.L. 254 when Lieutenant 
Drummond sank exhausted from his wounds. 
Only by dint of baling with buckets did Lieut. 
Crutchley and the unwounded keep the launch 
afloat until picked up. 

The great stunts that won these sixteen V.C.'s are 
typical of the bulldog spirit. The other 480 odd differ 
from them only in detail. All were deeds of mighty 
valour. But they will afford you a graphic idea, I 
hope, of the stuff that the fighting Britisher is made 
of. 

Perhaps the remarkable thing about these out- 
standing feats of British heroism is that in the 
overwhelming majority of cases they were per- 
formed by the most ordinary type of fellow, distin- 
guished in no way, as far as anybody ever knew, 
for courage or nerve. And the thing that marks 
all V.C. men is their invincible modesty. " Cut it 
out," they say, when you ask them to tell you what 
they did to win a place among Britannia's immortals. 



The war has not produced many great poems. A 
sonnet written by an Englishman, Major Maurice 
Baring, Independent Air Force, in honour of his 
friend and comrade, The Hon. Julian Grenfell, 
himself a poet and who followed his V.C. cousin 
Francis to a hero's death in France, is the best I 
have seen. It sings of the bulldog breed : 



THE BULLDOG BREED 115 

Because of you we will be glad and gay, 
Remembering you. we will be brave and strong, 
And hail the advent of each dangerous day 
And meet the last adventure with a song. 
And as you proudly gave your jewelled gift, 
We'll give our lesser offering with a smile, 
Nor falter on that path where, all too swift, 
You led the way and leapt the golden stile. 
Whether new paths, new heights to climb you find, 
Or gallop through the unfooted asphodel, 
We know you know we shall not lag behind 
Nor halt to waste a moment on a fear. 
And you wttT speed us onward with a cheer 
And wave beyond the stars that all is well." * 

* [Reproduced with the author's permission.] 



I 2 



CHAPTER IX 

THE REAL BRITISHER 

The preceding pages of this booklet have been 
devoted in large part to an account of what the 
Britishers have accomplished during the war. I 
would like to wind up with a heart-to-heart talk 
on the subject of the Britisher as he really is. 

To begin with, he is not at all what he seems to 
be on first acquaintance, namely, a chilly proposi- 
tion. Like a foreign language, he requires to be 
studied, and studied carefully. I've been studying 
him for nearly twenty years and I'm just com- 
mencing to understand him. He is dawning on me 
for what he is — a regular fellow, a white man, and 
one of our kind. It won't take you twenty years to 
know him. The war has made a lot of changes in 
him and he thaws faster than he used to. 

The Britishers and the Americans belong to the 
same English-speaking race, even though we don't 
say " raw-ther " when we mean rather. Both of us 
are democratic to the core, too. That's why we're 

116 



THE REAL BRITISHER 117 

on the same side in this war. Sure. But otherwise 
most of our traits, habits, impulses and ordinary- 
views about things are as different as day from 
night. That is not quite correct. They only seem 
different, for it is my experience that when 
Britishers and Yanks get together and thrash things 
out, they find that their notions about life aren't as 
far apart as they appeared to be. We discover 
that we only look at life through spectacles of 
different colours. Our tastes and ideals are very 
similar. All we do is to gratify the tastes and pursue 
the ideals in our own ways. If a Britisher steps on 
you by mistake, he says " Sorry." A Yank says 
" Beg your pardon." What each means is that he 
wishes he hadn't done it. They put it differently : 
that's all. When you took your girl out for the last 
time before leaving the U.S.A., she probably told 
you that she had had a " bully " evening. The 
first girl you took out in England, I'll bet, assured 
you that you had given her a " ripping " time. 
But your Yank girl and your British girl meant 
precisely the same thing. 

The Britishers' English differs from Yank English 
all along the line, but that doesn't signify that it is 
bad English. After all, the language belongs to 
them. They saw it first. They do with it what 
the}^ please ; and we do to it what we please. Take 
their railroad lingo. To begin with, " there ain't no 
such animal " as a " railroad " in this country. 
They've only got " railways." They " shunt " 



118 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

their trains. We " sidetrack " ours. By a 
" depot " the Britisher means a place where stuff is 
stored. By " depot " we mean the place we go to or 
come from when travelling by rail. Britishers 
" book places." If they talked our language, 
they'd " reserve accommodations." And they call 
conductors and brakesmen *' guards." 

So it is with the thousand and one things in which 
our respective characteristics differ. Americans, 
for instance, are hail-fellow-well-met sort of people. 
When we slap a man on the back as a welcome, we 
mean it. We're mighty glad to see him. We let 
him know it by the effusiveness of our greeting, by 
the warmth of our hand-clasp — and usually by a 
slap on the back. These being our emotions, we 
display them. We don't hide them away as if we 
were ashamed of them. It's our way. The 
Britisher's way is different. He seldom slaps you 
on the back. If he is meeting you for the first time, 
he never does. His welcome is polite, but never 
effusive. In the grip of his hand there is courtesy 
rather than cordiality. You do not get the glad 
hand from a Britisher till he is sure that you 
deserve it. Once you've proved that you have 
a right to his friendship, you get it in full 
measure. 

I often wonder what it is that makes the Britisher 
act like an iceberg. He is not an iceberg, but he 
likes to make you think he is. You Yanks in 
khaki are talked to, I guess, in British railway 



THE REAL BRITISHER 119 

trains by natives who happen to be your fellow- 
passengers. But American civilians like myself 
might travel the whole length of the British Isles 
in a train and never have a Britisher open his head 
to us except to inquire, politely, if we object to his 
keeping the window open. I can forgive a Britisher 
anything, by the way, except his ungovernable 
passion for open windows in a railway-car, even 
though the temperature outside be Arctic. I like 
fresh air, all right, but I go outdoors when I want it. 
Why shouldn't people talk to one another in a 
train ? Life is short and railroad journeys are long. 
Not all Britishers act like icebergs, but I have come 
to the conclusion that ninety-nine out of a hundred 
spend their lives trying to be as Polar as possible. 
A celebrated English General and Colonial ad- 
ministrator told me the other day that he belongs 
to a London club in which he hasn't been spoken to 
for twenty-five years. He talked to a fellow-member 
once and the man nearly died of apoplexy. A 
famous Irishman named Daniel O'Connell said that 
the average Englishman has all the qualities of a 
poker except its occasional warmth. 

He was right. The average Englishman tries to 
keep himself as stiff as a poker. He hates unbend- 
ing. He was taught at school that it was not " good 
form ' ' to appear to be emotional . I have a Yank kid 
of my own at a typical English boarding-school for 
boys of from nine to fourteen years of age. I can 
see in him, from term to term, the exact effect of 



120 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

the British system of suppressing emotions. When 
parents visit their boys at an English boarding- 
school, the boys object to being kissed or embraced 
in sight of their comrades. They are taught that 
such exhibitions of natural effusiveness are " un- 
manly " and more fit for little girls than for English 
lads who are growing into young gentlemen. The 
boys don't object to being made a fuss of when 
they're alone with their parents, but they don't 
want any of the sob-stuff in public. 

Thus from his tenderest years the Britisher is 
brought up to look upon " reserve " and " poise " as 
the finest of human qualities. The effect of this 
system is to make the average Britisher shy. When 
my kid started in at Eastbourne he was a typical 
young American holy terror. Three years of Hold- 
Yourself-In training turned him from an untamed 
cub into a sucking-dove. He is frightfully shy. 
He faces strangers almost in embarrassment. 
He never rushes up and at them as if he were 
really glad to see them. He is polite, all right, 
but always " reserved." He's been taught to 
be. It's the English way. 

If you will remember this, you will be on the right 
road to understanding the British temperament. 
The Britisher's apparent coldness, which Americans 
so often mistake for rudeness, is nothing in the 
world but inborn and inculcated shyness. By that I 
mean that he has not only inherited " reserve " 
from his father before him, but in order that he 




WINDSOR CASTLE. 




l YjX4^s &++s fH-muA^- Chs-CtsU /Cos ^*^flu iyUi^*Si^ 

jfez Old %/£v&£ #£z 




[Reproduced by permission. 

King George's "Glad Hand" to the Yanks 

[A copy of this letter is handed to every American soldier 
who lands on British soil.] 



THE REAL BRITISHER 123 

should grow up to be the right kind of a Britisher 
he has " reserve " taught to him when he goes to 
school. He learns there that he must never wear 
his heart on his sleeve. It's one of the explanations 
of the phenomenal cool-headedness with which the 
Britishers have weathered the terrific ordeal of the 
war. 

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. How 
has the system on which Young Britain is raised 
turned out in practice ? Well, I think the answer 
to that can be found in this book. Britain has made 
good. Her system of rearing her manhood has 
made good. I have been talking about the 
" reserve " and " poise " of British boys. The 
same thing applies to British girls. They have 
made good in this war too. The very lads, the very 
girls, who were brought up on the non-emotional 
scheme of education — the " Public School " youth 
of both sexes, the boys from Eton, Harrow and 
Winchester, the girls from Cheltenham, Roedean 
and Wycombe — are the ones who have " carried on " 
in the field and at home. The British Army to-day 
is officered to a large extent by " men " who were 
boys in 1914, attending either the " public schools " 
(what we call " prep." schools) or the universities. 
Oxford and Cambridge, the Yale and Harvard of 
England, have been practically deserted for four 
years. Their famous old halls and dormitories are 
Officers' Training Corps headquarters now, and 
.have been ever since the war began. Hundreds of 



124 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

fellows who went out from them as undergraduates 
have meantime won glory as competent, gallant 
officers. Hundreds of them, too, as you will see if 
you ever visit Oxford or Cambridge and look at the 
Rolls of Honour on the doors of the college chapels, 
have laid down their young lives in Liberty's 
cause. These were the boys who were brought up 
to be shy and reserved and always to keep their 
poise — who didn't like to be babied by their fathers 
and mothers when other kids were looking, who 
were trained not to be effusive when introduced to 
strangers, who grew up trying to look and act as 
much like icebergs as their fathers did. Yet in the 
Great Test they were not found wanting. Nor were 
the girls who in 1914 were at boarding-school, 
" flappers," as their sort is called, because they 
wear their hair " flapping " up and down their 
backs. These girls, many of whom four years ago 
lived only for chocolate creams and sweethearts and 
novels, are " W.A.A.C.'s " [Women's Army Auxi- 
liary Corps], or " V.A.D.'s " [Voluntary Aid 
Detachment] to-day, or land girls, or chauffeurs, 
or hard at work in one of the other countless war 
occupations in which the supposedly weaker sex is 
distinguishing itself in all belligerent countries. 
These young Britishers — boys and girls — are the 
backbone of their country in this critical hour. 
You see, it didn't harm them at all to be brought 
up differently from us. They have turned out to be 
real men and women just the same. 



THE REAL BRITISHER 125 

Americans who are in England for the first time 
find everything old-fashioned — the dinky railway 
trains, the low, grey old buildings in the big cities, 
the snail-like elevators, the people's love for doing 
things in the way their grandfathers did them and 
because their grandfathers did them. We don't 
find enough hustle in the air. The Britishers don't 
seem to know how to get a move on. Now, the 
fact is that there is nearly as much hustle to the 
square inch in these islands as there is in the 
United States, only the Britisher doesn't make 
such a fuss about it. His railway trains do 
look dinky alongside of ours, but you will probably 
be surprised to know that some of the fastest 
passenger trains in the world (in ordinary times) 
are the expresses which cover the long-distance 
stretches in this country, like the London-Plymouth 
line, a run of something like 225 miles which before 
the war used to be done without a stop. The 
Britisher loves old things — buildings, customs, 
habits, traditions, precedents. I heard a man say 
once that an Englishman would only adopt a new 
idea on condition that it didn't look new. Being 
only 142 years old as a nation, we're too young to 
have acquired veneration for the antique. When we 
have 1,000 years and more of national history back 
of us, we'll not want to pull down beautiful old 
churches that, to the average Yank's way of think- 
ing, obstruct traffic — such as a pair of musty 
piles squatting squarely in the middle of London's 



126 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

busy Strand. We'll love them, as the Britisher 
loves them, because they are old. At present we're 
in the sky-scraper phase of our existence, in the 
age when newness, bigness, quickness, seem to us 
the important things of life. We will outgrow that 
phase. 

An Englishman's home is his castle — that's one 
of the most famous of British sayings. To know the 
real Britisher he has to be seen in his home. The 
homes of Britain are thrown wide open to the 
American soldier and sailor, and I hope each and 
every one of you may have the opportunity of 
enjoying British private hospitality. You will find 
it to be the real thing. There will be no chilly deals 
or " reserve " within the four walls in which you will 
be asked to make yourself perfectly at home. 
It will not make any difference whether the 
home you're invited to is a workman's cottage 
or a Ducal establishment. The Britisher leaves all 
" side " outside when he takes you inside. You will 
discover very promptly that his " poise " is really 
not poise at all, but pose. He turns out to be a 
human being — probably to your surprise, certainly 
to your pleasure and complete satisfaction. On one 
or two occasions I have been the guest of a real, live 
English Duke — one of the noblest in the realm. He 
was as Dukish as I expected him to be — till we 
reached his home, which was a real castle. Then he 
suddenly transformed himself into a full-blooded 
man and into one of Nature's gentlemen. He 



THE REAL BRITISHER 127 

grabbed my suit-case out of my hand, as soon as 
we crossed the threshold, and personally escorted 
me to my bedroom. Half an hour later he 
knocked at the door (it was late at night) and 
inquired : " Anything you want before you go 
to sleep ? " I was up against the Britisher as he 
really is. 

It used to be the fashion, in our country to twist 
the British Lion's tail. Every politician after votes, 
or every Fourth of July orator who wanted to make 
a hit, roasted the British. Those days, I hope, are 
gone for ever. It will be for you and for me, who 
have made the acquaintance of the real Britain, to 
see that they never return. I firmly believe that 
the keeping of the world's peace, when this war is 
over, will be mainly in the hands of the English- 
speaking peoples. We shall not need to enter into 
a formal " alliance " with the British Empire. The 
alliance that has been sealed by the shedding of 
British and American blood on common battlefields 
is signed in ink that will outlast all the written 
alliances that could ever be put on paper. 

And if I may indulge in one parting thought 
before I finish a work that has been for me a labour 
of love, I would ask you to banish from your 
thoughts the notion that America came into the 
war to " save England." England has saved her- 
self. France has saved herself. We are in the war 
to save ourselves. We entered it because self- 
preservation is the first law of Nature. We are at 



128 EXPLAINING THE BRITISHERS 

war with Germany for precisely the same reasons 
that Britain, France and Italy are at war with her — 
because her victory would demolish the very 
foundations on which American life rests. We are 
at war to make the world safe for Democracy — for 
our own Democracy as well as for the Democracy 
of the other nations alongside whose scarred and 
veteran legions it is our high privilege to fight. 



THE END 



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